PANJIM: Sunburn’s flamboyant announcement of setting its foot in South Goa has become a matter of deep concern for the tranquillity loving South Goa. Deaths, robberies, traffic jams so on and so forth, linked to the event when it was held in Vagator and other places in North Goa, have come back to haunt people of South Goa.
Memories of the incident of the 23-year-old Meha Bahuguna collapsing and dying due to suspected drug overdose during the 2010 edition of Sunburn flashed back in the minds of Goans. Sunburn has been an area of worry for the State ever since it started.
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Suspected drug abuse cases at Sunburn repeated in Sandeep Kotta, 24, a resident of Bengaluru, was shifted to hospital in an unconscious state from the Sunburn venue at Vagator beach in Goa on December 31 evening, but died while undergoing treatment.
In the same year, two friends – Sai Prasad Malayala and Venkat Satyanarayana, both from Andhra Pradesh – collapsed while waiting in a queue to enter the venue and were declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
Just last year in 2023, a girl who was suspected to be badly intoxicated of some substance and complaining of being uneasy had been hospitalised in the nearby health centre. She was also at Sunburn.
Next are the law and order issues that arise due to Sunburn. For the last three years numbers of gangs involved in organised crimes have made Sunburn and big EDM events that receive rich people their targets. Thousands of high-end phones that were robbed by these gangs were seized by Goa Police. The Goa Police in fact are extremely burdened due to these criminal activities. In addition to that the entire traffic and civil police force has to be diverted to the places in and around the events.
Sunburn has also been one of the main triggers for multiple Public Interest Litigations against sound pollution both in High Court and in National Green Tribunal (NGT). On New Year’s Eve, the village of Vagator with Sunburn and other small and big parties becomes a place absolutely inhabitable and this has been repeatedly reported by various victims and well as concerned citizens.
Comunidade of Anjuna, the custodians of the land on which Sunburn usually held, also had to approach courts as the promoters had not paid the dues to the association.
Abhijit Prabhudesai said, “Entire Goa knows the kind of elements and tourism that Sunburn brings to the State. People of South Goa are awake, and they will make sure that they oppose the same.”
