PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa has shot down a petition filed by Dexter Savio de Souza, the director of Villa Calangute Resort for claiming he was not responsible for the loud music and sought to blame the loud music on ‘Alexa’ -- the Amazon assistant, whom he said his guests were using to play music.
De Souza approached the High Court seeking the quashing of the show cause issued to him by the Goa State Pollution Control Board for allegedly playing loud music from his resort.
Unsurprisingly, the High Court was not amused.
“The defence about “Alexa” playing the music or the guest in the resort playing the music is a novel defence and we are sure that the same will be dealt with by the Authority which has issued the show-cause notice. But, at least, prima facie, we feel that the petitioner cannot pass on the blame to its guests and even more, to Alexa. If such defences are to be upheld, then, it will be very difficult for the authorities to enforce the noise pollution rules,” the bench of Justices M S Sonak and R N Laddha ruled.
“As it is, monitoring issues of noise pollution is quite difficult. The show-cause notices have been issued by giving specific instances in this case. There are records of several complaints against the petitioner. This record has been produced by the petitioner along with this petition,” the High Court also said.
De Souza in his petition sought the quashing of the notices claiming that they were “false” and that he has already filed a reply stating that no loudspeaker was used, and the guests in the resort were playing the music through “Alexa”.
The High Court, however, proceeded to impose costs. “We dismiss this petition with costs quantified at 10,000,” the High Court ruled.
