Goa fire claims three young breadwinners from Assam

Rahul Tanti had left home just days after his newborn son arrived — not out of choice, but out of necessity. At 32, the eldest of seven siblings in a tea tribe family from Assam’s Cachar district, he knew that the meagre ₹200-a-day wage in the tea gardens would never give his children the education he dreamed of for them.

So on November 24, he took a bus to Goa, hoping that a few months of double shifts would help him return home sooner, with enough money to secure a better life for his three children.

On December 6 night, during his very first night shift at the Arpora nightclub where he had recently taken up work in addition to a day job as a gardener, Tanti was among the 25 people killed when a massive blaze ripped through the establishment. “He just wanted his children to study in a good school — something none of us ever had,” his brother Deva said, recalling how Tanti started working after Class 4 to support their father, a tea garden labourer.

Tanti was not alone in that journey out of Assam’s shrinking tea belt. Two other young men from the state, also from marginalised communities, were among the victims of the fire — each carrying the same story of poverty, migration and unrealised plans.

Manojit Mal, 24, from Silcoorie Grant village, had left for Goa a year and half ago, desperate to support his ageing parents and three younger siblings. “There is no work here except tea, and even the gardens have been failing for years,” said neighbour Pradip Mal. “The family is extremely poor. He was the only earning hand.”

The third victim, 22-year-old Diganta Patir from Assam’s Dhemaji district, belonged to a Mising tribal family that has endured years of floods and joblessness. After losing his father as a child, he started working outside the state at 18 — first as a cook in Tamil Nadu, then in Goa from April this year. “He studied till Class 10. He had saved enough with his younger brother to build a house back home,” said his uncle, Biswa Patir. “He was planning to return next month and start something of his own. Now his mother is alone again.”