Dark shadow over Sunburn, three die at Goa fest

Yet another tourist visiting the controversial yet popular EDM festival Sunburn in Goa collapsed and died after being rushed to a hospital, taking the toll of deaths that took place in and around the venue of the festival to three and prompting a heated political debate over the availability of drugs in the coastal tourist destination. On the first day of the festival, two friends — Sai Prasad Malayala and Venkat Satyanarayana, both from Andhra Pradesh — collapsed while waiting in a queue to enter the venue and were declared dead on arrival at the hospital. Sandeep Kotta, 24, a resident of Bengaluru, was shifted to hospital in an unconscious state from the Sunburn venue at Vagator beach in Goa on Sunday evening but died while undergoing treatment, the police said. He added that the police were “successful in prevention and no case of drug abuse has been reported.” Goa’s tourism minister Manohar Ajgaonkar, who himself attended the music festival and was filmed grooving to the music in a video that has since gone viral, has also stoutly defended the event and insisted that: “we cannot focus on the two deaths and ignore the 50,000 people who were enjoying at the festival”.