At least eleven dead in frightening IPL stampede outside Indian cricket stadium
At least eleven people have died and more than three dozen more have been injured after a horror day of cricket celebrations.
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At least eleven people have died and more than thirty more have been injured after a deadly stampede in southern India.
The crush happened as tens of thousands of cricket fans gathered outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru city to celebrate Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s first Indian Premier League title win.
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Karnataka state’s Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told reporters the crowd tried to break one of the stadium’s gates and storm the venue in celebration of the side’s first trophy in the 18-year history of the world’s richest T20 franchise.
Eleven people have been confirmed as being killed while 33 others were reportedly injured and receiving medical attention.
“At a time of celebration, this unfortunate event should not have happened. We are saddened by this,” Siddaramaiah told reporters on Wednesday.
“No one expected this crowd.”
RCB defeated Punjab Kings by six runs in the IPL final at Ahmedabad on Tuesday.
And fans turned up in the tens of thousands in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the stars returning home to celebrate, including Indian legend Virat Kohli.
With the crowd unmanageable the much-anticipated open-top bus parade was even cancelled, so fans instead gathered to watch the team’s trophy lift.
RCB had given away free passes to fans for the event through its website, only adding to the congestion.
DK Shivakumar, the deputy chief minister of Karnataka state, told reporters “the crowd was very uncontrollable”.
While addressing the tragedy on Wednesday, BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said that there had been “some lapses” when organising the celebration,
“I am not in a fault-finding mission at this moment without knowing the complete fact. Whenever these kinds of events are being organised, if you take the example of how BCCI organised such victory celebration after India won the T20 World Cup in West Indies last year, there was a thorough planning with local cricket association – that is the Mumbai Cricket Association – as well as the Mumbai authorities, which includes the police, the fire brigade, the disaster management authorities,” Saika told NDTV.
“When planning that magnitude of celebration in Mumbai, when there was a sea of humanity, where so many people gathered, everything happened smoothly. Not a single untoward incident occurred because all the protocols were duly followed.
“That kind of planning takes time. It cannot be done in a hastily manner. I think some lapses definitely took place. I am sure the authorities having this responsibility in Bengaluru, they will do some soul-searching to find out. Definitely, nobody should be allowed to go scot-free for any lapses on their part.
“After such a glorious ending to the IPL, this has been an anticlimax. There have been IPL celebrations in the past as well, like in Kolkata last year when KKR won but nothing happened there.”
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Originally published as At least eleven dead in frightening IPL stampede outside Indian cricket stadium
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