Victorian couple pleads for government intervention after tobacco shop firebombing destroys their beloved Melbourne cafe

Newlywed cafe owners Manali Purohit and Ashish Sharma recall well the day a new neighbour moved in with ambitions to open a grocery store.

“We thought, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic, that would synergise very well with our business’,” Sharma told AAP.

Purohit, a Mumbai-raised pastry chef, and her husband had only recently acted on their dream to open their vegan eatery, And Bodega , on St Georges Road in Melbourne’s Fitzroy North.

But it wasn’t long before the presence of their next-door tenants began to stir unease among tight-knit locals.

“We knew pretty early on it may not be a grocery store, it may be like something like a tobacco store,” Sharma said.

“My wife was already a little anxious ... there was a little bit of inevitability.”

Customers also expressed concern to them about the possibility arsonists could target the neighbourhood as they had in relation to over 150 other tobacconist stores across Victoria since March 2023.

Then in late-September, as she arrived for an early morning baking shift, the glint of exposed glass jutting from the shop’s front window caught Purohit’s eye.

Plastered to the wall was a handwritten note, according to another witness spoken to by AAP.

They attributed it to a group now synonymous with the city’s tobacco wars: The Commission.

The glass was again smashed last Thursday, with CCTV allegedly capturing a car driving past the tobacconist, before bricks were hurtled into the shopfront.

By Monday, early morning Triple Zero calls from terrified locals reported hearing explosions about 3.45am.

The damage destroyed the tobacconist, devastated And Bodega and another cafe, and left Mr Sharma and Purohit with “what looked like a bomb site” where their plant-based cafe once thrived.

“There were these little canisters strewn all across our premise ... the severity and the ferociousness of these things ... it’s terrorism,” Sharma said.