Mr Munaf and Mr Vaz’s 42-year-old-son are among a disturbing rise in the number of residents of Goa who have become victims of a gambling addiction.
“Gambling is surely on the increase in Goa. The kind of money which is floating because of the casino industry around is unbelievable,” says Apa Teli, a recently retired police superintendent.
Goa is the only state in India where live gambling is legal. The first casino opened here in 1999.
Today, the state’s 15 casinos – five of them offshore, located in ships anchored on the Mandovi river – receive some 15,000 guests every day, according to one estimate.
The government earns more than 1.35bn rupees ($22m; £13m) in taxes from the thriving casino industry – this money, say officials, is very useful at a time when government revenues have dipped after India’s Supreme Court banned mining in Goa last year, depriving the state of taxes.
Political parties have railed against the casino industry, saying they have a “corrupting” influence on local culture, but successive governments have used taxes earned from casinos to justify their existence.
When the present Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in the opposition, he said casinos were “criminal-oriented, prostitution-oriented and gambling cannot deliver good tourism”.
At a public meeting this July, Mr Parrikar said: “Although I am personally against them, how will I be compensated if I close them?”
Goa received three million tourists last year and casinos have become a major draw for many of them.