An ambulance arrives with the victims at GMC.
PANAJI
The aftermath of the devastating fire at Arpora’s popular nightclub 'Birch by Romeo Lane' left corridors at the Goa Medical College and Hospital in Bambolim filled with silence, broken only by anxious conversations.
The bodies of 25 victims were brought to the morgue where identification processes as well as the statutory post mortem autopsy examinations were ongoing through the day.
Also, five survivors are admitted and being treated at the hospital, with the most severe injuries (28%) reported to be those of a 20-year-old girl.
With most victims being migrant staff of the club or tourist clients, the process of identification has been painfully slow.
All the 25 victims were eventually identified and the authorities released the names late on Sunday night, confirming that five of the victims were tourist-clients and the remaining 20 were staff of the nightclub.
Authorities said, one of the dead tourist-client was Ishaq from Karnataka, and four -- Saroj Joshi, Vinod Kumar, Anita Joshi, and Kamla Joshi -- were from Delhi.
The names of the other victims who are staff of the club, were provided as: Mohit, Pradeep Mahto, and Binod Mahto (Jharkhand), Rahul Tanti and Manojit Mal (Assam), Satish Singh, Surender Singh, Jitendra Singh, Sumit Negi, and Manish Singh (Uttarakhand), Subhash Chetri (Darjeeling, West Bengal), Vivek Katwal, Sabin, Churna Bahadur Pun, and Sudeep (Nepal), Sunil Kumar and Rohan Singh (Uttar Pradesh), Dominic and Manoj Jora (Maharashtra), and Digambar Patir (Assam).
Earlier in the day at the GMC, relatives or acquaintances who rushed to the hospital described the atmosphere as “unbearable,” with many waiting for hours to confirm the fate of loved ones.
“I came here hoping it wasn’t my friend,” said a young man clutching a photograph. “But the officials asked me to wait until verification. It’s horrible not knowing.”
Another acquaintance of a victim from Nepal said, “We don’t have family here. We are just friends trying to help. It feels like we are alone in this tragedy.”
Another man said he was the uncle of the victim from Uttarakhand, who worked as a chef in the kitchen of the nightclub. He said apart from his nephew, Satish Rana (27), he was able to provide officials with preliminary identification of 3-4 other bodies, all in their early or mid-twenties.
North Goa Collector Ankit Yadav, IAS, also visited the GMC earlier in the day and said he has issued instructions to his subordinates including additional collector, deputy collector and the police to ensure that the families must be provided all logistic support to transport the mortal remains.
Hospital staff, visibly strained, said the morgue was overwhelmed. “We are doing our best, but the sheer number of bodies and the lack of immediate kin makes it difficult,” a GMC official explained.
The mood at GMC was one of collective mourning. Many described the sight of rows of covered bodies as “haunting.”
The uncertainty has compounded the trauma, with acquaintances pleading for faster identification processes.
