PANAJI
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| Five of Goa’s 15 casinos are located in ships anchored on Mandovi river |
India’s popular beach resort of Goa has seen a rise in gambling addiction in the past decade after the state opened its first casino, writes Goa-based journalist Mayabhushan Nagvenkar.
Matias Vaz, 65, has spent the last 10 years of his life paying off debts that his son ran up while gambling in the former Portuguese colony.
He says he sold off his land, dipped into his savings and mortgaged family gold to repay over 6 million rupees (about $97,000; £59,500) that his son borrowed from debtors to finance his gambling habit. His wife and his son’s daughter-in-law were murdered after a dispute involving the sale of a family plot to settle debts.
Mr Vaz, who once owned a thriving publishing house where his son helped him, now makes a meagre living translating documents from Portuguese into English and making photocopies in a shop in Goa’s capital, Panaji.
Full report here BBC
