The High Court of Bombay at Goa on Tuesday tagged Public Interest Lit igation (PIL) writ petition related to the Birch By Ro meo Lane fire incident at Arpora with the writ peti tion already converted as suo motu by the Court. The Court ordered that writ petition filed by Pradeep Ghadi Amonkar and Sunil D Divkar and the PIL writ petition filed by Aishwarya Salgaonkar will be tagged with the suo motu PIL. Adv Rohit Bras De Sa has already been appointed as Amicus Curiae in the Suo Motu PIL and he has been asked to file a separate memo touching upon all these aspects, which would be exhaustive and covering the entire State including different local bodies and different adjudicating au thorities within next two weeks. The matter pertains to issues arising out of the massive fire incident at Birch by Romeo Lane in which 25 persons were killed thereby raising se rious concerns over safety and compliance. The Court has directed all the respondents, most ly government depart ments, to file their replies. The State government has been asked to mention what corrective measures can be taken and wheth er any particular officer/ authority can be made accountable to prevent recurrence of such unfor tunate incidents in future. Arguing on behalf of Salgaonkar, Adv Ankur Kumar urged the Court to direct the government to constitute a Court-moni tored retired High Court Judge Special Investiga tion Team (SIT) to investigate the Birch By Romeo Lane, Arpora nightclub fire incident including the ille gal construction, licencing failures and dereliction of duty by the authorities concerned. He said that the Court has now tagged both the petitions because the subject matter is the same. Adv Kumar also prayed for a Judicial Commission headed by a retired High Court Judge to inquire into the crowd-management failures and administrative negligence and to di rect the State government to conduct a State-wide fire-safety audit of all night clubs, restaurants, hotels, bars, beach venues, and public-assembly buildings, and to close or demolish all establishments that lack construction licences, occupancy certificates or fire-safety compliance. Meanwhile, the Additional Sessions Court, Mapusa on Tuesday extended the interim anticipatory bail granted to Arpora-Nagoa Sarpanch Roshan Redkar and panchayat secretary Raghuvir Bagkar till December 23. Bagkar, who was the then panchayat secretary of the Ar pora-Nagoa, has already been suspended in the nightclub fire incident case. On December 11, the Court had granted interim relief to Redkar and Bagkar from arrest and had directed the Anju na Police to file their say
Arpora tragedy: HC tags pleas with suo motu PIL
