Curlies' Demolition: How a Goan Beach Shack Is Linked To Sonali Phogat's Death

As BJP searches for clues for leader's death, ruling party gets slammed for "bulldozer raj" in Goa.

Haryana BJP leader Sonali Phogat was found dead in Goa on the intervening night of 22 and 23 August. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

On any given day, Curlies – the one-storeyed beach shack restaurant in Goa, on every Indian tourist visitor's must-do checklist – is jam-packed. Indian tourists brave the walk down the uneven red-mud road, most unaware that they are trailing the very paths of the ‘70s international tribe of hippies who came in search of nirvana and stayed on for the peace and freedom.

Theirs was a search for a counter-culture, opting out of their militarily-industrialised, war-hungry, western homelands and finding `paradise' on the Goan bucolic sands of Calangute and later Anjuna.

These days, even the longish wait to be served by the busy waiters at Curlies did not deter the Indian throngs from hitting this south Anjuna rocky beach cove, its curated rustic chic, offering what to many domestic visitors, was the ultimate bohemian Goan experience – lager before the surf, crab on your plate, scuba diving beneath the waves and a sunset to die for – all great for the Instagram selfie.

Post sunset, websites tell you that the strobe and UV lights switch on, and techno and trance music reverberate from a DJ's turntable, as clientele hit the dance floor or the beachfront when there's an open-air trance party.

These too were rituals, whose origins date back to when Curlies was a low-slung thatched hut, and hippy communal groups congregated on its steps for spiritualistic sunset-gazing. Locals provided chai, rooms and houses-to-let, in a symbiotic relationship that was to last four decades, right until the mid-2000s.

Western backpackers, Israelis just out of military service, and others, joined the hippies in the ‘90s, diving into the newer sounds of the Goa Trance music scene, created right here in Anjuna, by long-staying Los Angeles-origin hippie, Goa Gill – all of it spawning an underground rave culture. Except that in Anjuna and its surrounds, the parties were pop-up and overground, with police and political payoffs and local and international DJs. By the 2000s, a few Indian rich joined the tribe – one of whose planned millennium party was halted for attempting to landscape an ocean-facing hillock in north Anjuna.

A String of Controversies

Post 2008, Anjuna gained notoriety after a British teenager Scarlett Keeling was found dead on the beach.

When the incident happened, however, the media gaze tilted towards a stereotype of a bikini-clad western tourist, which heralded busloads of male voyeur-tourism from the rural and small-town hinterland. This combined with the new spotlight on of raves, ended western backpacker tourism for good.

Since 2010, a booming Indian economy and IT sector sees cash-rich Indian youth heading to Goa for their own weekend downtime. Soon, news of overdose deaths of the unfortunate few Indian youngsters at annual Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festivals such as Sunburn, got highlighted on news channels, newspapers and magazines.

This sprawling village, with its palm fringed cliff-tops and rocky coves overlooking the ocean is a known rave party destination, post sunset. Several restaurant-by-day-night-club-by night establishments nestle all along that stretch.

Given the risk of overdosing deaths, political connections and protection matter here, and determine if the establishment is targeted or overlooked, when this happens.

In 2017, the Curlies' owner Edwin Nunes was arrested along with the owner of Club Nyex, after two young men died of overdose in separate partying incidents in the Anjuna-Vagator area during a long August 15 weekend. In 2019, the Curlies’ owner was acquitted in the case. And now, it’s back in the news for all the wrong reasons after Sonali Phogat – a BJP Haryana leader, actor and Tik Tok sensation – was brought dead to a local hospital.

Sonali Phogat Death: The Curlies Connection

On 9 September, the BJP state administration swung into action and overnight demolished parts of Curlies, citing coastal regulation zoning violation orders. Opposition leader Vijai Sardesai called this a 'vengeful' act.

According to official documents, 42-year-old Phogat and her associates, Sudhir Pal Sangwan, 39, and Sukhvinder Singh, 32, arrived in Goa on 22 August and checked in at the Grand Leoney Resort Hotel in north Goa’s Vagator. According to police documents placed before the courts, the party allegedly obtained MDMA (synthetic, psychoactive drug) from a room-boy at the hotel, and allegedly snorted some before heading to Curlies that night.

The trio allegedly partied till 2.30 am, when Phogat felt uneasy and vomited in the establishment's first floor washroom. The police claimed that this led her associate to dump an empty water bottle and an auto-press polythene packet (a small sachet that presses up close) with colourless crystals in the flush tank of a toilet at Curlies.

The trio resumed dancing and Phogat fell ill again at 4.30 am in the restaurant's toilet and was unable to walk. At 6 am, police documents say, she was taken by her associates back to the Grand Leoney Resort, where her condition worsened and she was shifted to a private hospital in Anjuna, where she was declared brought dead.

Police registered a case of unnatural death on 23 August and began investigations after Phogat's brother alleged she had been murdered. On 26 August, Anjuna police, at the instance of Phogat's associates, recovered an auto-press polythene packet with 2.20 grams of Methamphetamine from a toilet flush tank at Curlies.

The restaurant's alleged owner Edwin Nunes -- 'alleged' because he claims his sister is the official owner -- was arrested for permitting narcotic use on its premises and not checking guest entering for possession of contraband substances. Phogat's associates were placed under arrest and were being investigated for allegedly spiking her drink and other angles.

The police also arrested the room-boy of the Grand Leoney Resort, Dattaprasad Gaonkar, 24, and his alleged supplier, Rama Mandrekar, 38. On 7 September, a magistrate granted bail to Curlies' owner, while his advocate pointed out that the politically connected hotel, where the narcotics were supplied to the trio, had faced no action. He claimed that his client's establishment, where the substances were allegedly brought in a drinking water bottle, had been implicated.

Within a day, the state government, facing flak on rising crimes and embarrassment over the narcotic-related death of the BJP politician, pounced on coastal zoning violation orders to muster a demolition team and take down portions of Curlies 9 September onward. Three days before this, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had passed an order dismissing Curlies' appeal. Within less than 24 hours of the NGT order's release, the administration garnered teams of labourers and a police force to tear down portions of the restaurant, while its owners managed to get a stay from the Supreme Court to temporarily save the main structure.

Opposition legislator Vijai Sardesai criticising the government action, said the "vengeance" action against Curlies was only an attempt to fool the people of Goa and India that some sort of action has been taken in the case.

"This type of bulldozer politics has no place in a socio-politically conscious state. If an obnoxious substance that goes into water and becomes colourless, is brought from somewhere else and consumed, how does the restaurant come into the picture in that? Does that mean that that place has to be broken?" Sardesai told The Quint. He said the main issues of drug supply and the politician-drug mafia nexus, that had been debated in the Goa Assembly in the past, were still unresolved.

(Pamela D'Mello is an independent journalist based out of Goa.)