Goa Night Club Owners Flee After Fire Kills 25; Actor Dileep Acquitted, Six Convicted in Gang Rape Case That Shook Mollywood; Govt, Regulators Wash Hands of Indigo Fiasco

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Snapshot of the day

December 8, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

Twenty-five people were killed, 20 of them staff workers, after they were trapped in a Goa nightclub that caught fire on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday. Six others were injured in the blaze. Many of the deceased workers hailed from northern states, including Uttarakhand and Jharkhand, as well as from Nepal. The state government has launched a magisterial inquiry into the incident and some among the club’s management and owners have been arrested or booked, while a blame game also broke out between the Arpora gram panchayat and local political leaders. An environmental activist based in the area said speaking to Rishikesh Bahadurdesai that ‘no authority can claim innocence’, alleging that the club violated a number of norms and bylaws.

A video has surfaced on social media of how the fire started, apparently due to indoor firecrackers. And the owners of the club have reportedly fled to Thailand (See below).

The accident has shone a spotlight on the rampant violation of safety norms at nightspots around the country.

Messages of solidarity have been pouring in for the survivor after Malayalam actor Dileep was acquitted today by the Ernakulam sessions court in a 2017 gang rape case. Though the court convicted six men of abduction and rape, Dileep, who was accused of conspiring to protect the rapists and of instigating the crime against the survivor, an actress, was let off along with four others. Deccan Herald reports that the prosecution case was that “Dileep hired the gang to attack the actress” because she had alerted the actor’s wife to the fact that he was having an affair with another woman.

Asked about IndiGo’s ongoing operational meltdown that has left thousands of travellers in the lurch, Union civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu said in the Rajya Sabha on Monday that his government will take “very, very strict