Kolkata: Ruhu Das could not sleep Saturday night. Everytime she closed her eyes, she was haunted by the image of a man hunched over his wife, asking anyone who would listen if she was still alive. “When he asked me to check, I checked her nose and opened her mouth,” Das told ThePrint. “She had died. I couldn’t tell him. All I did was cry.”
Das is among the survivors of Saturday’s stampede at North Kolkata’s Chorebagan Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal, which killed 19 people and left around 27 injured, many of them said to be critical.
The stampede has left local residents as well as Bengalis throughout the country reeling. Massive crowds at Durga Puja pandals are no novelty; and pandal-hopping during the Durga Puja season is an activity looked forward to all year round.
So, when news first started coming out about the stampede at Chorebagan—a pandal with nearly a century-old history of hosting Durga Puja festivities—fervent discussions erupted on social media about the last time it had happened—“had it ever happened before?” people asked. Most said they couldn’t remember any precedent. Others added that it had happened before, but this was definitely the first time people had died.
On Sunday morning, the site of the stampede and the pandal itself stood barricaded. But personal belongings littered outside—footwear, bangles, water bottles—presented a silent testimony to the chaos of the previous evening. Some reports suggest it was an announcement that the pandal was about to collapse that started pandemonium; others point to rains that pounded Kolkata Saturday evening.
Much of the scrutiny centres on the road leading to and from the pandal, which is narrow and cannot accommodate more than four people side by side. Same is the case with the entry and exit. To make matters worse, the venue had no emergency exit—just a white placard placed next to the main exit also labelled it the emergency exit.
Seven people, including the puja organisers and crowd managers, have been arrested in the wake of the stampede. Both the central and state governments have announced compensation for the families of the deceased and the injured. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who arrived in Kolkata with plans to participate in Durga Puja pandals, is expected to visit the Kolkata Medical College and Hospital in the College Street area Sunday to meet the injured.
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‘Slow rescue’
Among eyewitnesses and participants at Chorebagan, there is consensus on one thing: the turnout this time was perhaps the largest ever for the pandal. Akhilesh Kumar, who lives nearby and was present at the spot, said the crowd outnumbered the police and the volunteers. People also agree on another fact: the designated volunteers and police personnel were slow to respond when the stampede began.
“When people fell one after another, falling on each other, being trampled on, the volunteers were nowhere to be seen,” said Akhilesh. “We tried to pull people out of both the entry and the exit gates.”
Vikram Prasad, another survivor, told ThePrint how civilians rushed to the rescue of the injured. He said he had watched CPR videos on YouTube a year ago, out of pure curiosity, and proved helpful Saturday.
“I saw half a dozen dead bodies myself. Among the injured, a few people were in so much pain that when I tried to pull them out, they asked me to stop because they couldn’t bear it,” said Prasad, who lives some 50 metres from the exit gate.
Prasad and other local youth carried the injured to ambulances stationed at the entrance gate. Each of the injured was carried by four men—two holding the arms and two lifting the legs. Prasad said he requested police personnel to open their vehicles so that the injured devotees could be ferried to hospitals.
“The situation was really bad and scary. Two-three ambulances were not enough to ferry the injured. So, I had to argue with the police personnel to allow their vehicles to carry the injured,” said Prasad.
Speaking to ThePrint, local residents pointed out that this July, the old puja committee—the panel that organises the festivities at each pandal—was asked to resign and a new panel put in place.
“The puja committee was inexperienced and could do only so much in two or three months,” said Akhilesh. “The crowd management was poor.”
Organisers of the puja are among the people arrested for the stampede so far. According to Kolkata Police, the arrested persons include Raj Kumar Sewda alias Raja (48), the secretary of the puja committee; Santanu Dubey (55), its vice-president; and Biplab Mukherjee alias Joy (48), who was engaged in the construction of a bamboo structure.
The others arrested, ANI reports, have been identified as Koushik Saha (53), who was involved in crowd management and checking VIP passes; Pintu Dey (51), who was engaged in crowd management; and Suman Chakraborty (30) and Rajesh Pal (29), who were working as private security in-charges.
Edited by Sunanda Ranjan
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