These include members of the organising committee — Chorebagan Sarbojanin Durgotsab Samity secretary Raj Kumar and vice-president Santanu Dubey — besides Biplab Mukherjee, who built the bamboo structure; Koushik Saha and Pintu Dey, who were responsible for crowd control; and Suman Chakraborty and Rajesh Pal, who were in charge of private security. The seven people arrested for a stampede at a Durga Puja pandal in Kolkata’s Chorbagan area, which led to 19 deaths, were sent to 10 days of police custody by a local court on Sunday.
Police had registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder over the stampede that broke out around 7:40 pm on Saturday amid heavy rain.
During the hearing, the seven men were produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court, Bankshall, on Sunday afternoon. But the lawyer representing two of the accused, Pintu Dey and Kaushik Saha, argued that his clients were arrested despite the fact that they had actually been engaged in rescue efforts and social service. Similarly, the lawyer for another accused, Raj Kumar (alias Raja), stated that her client had no involvement in the incident and had merely gone to view the puja. After the court granted remand, investigating officers from the Girish Park Police Station now intend to interrogate the accused to determine if any other individuals were involved in the incident. “We have gathered sufficient evidence pointing to gross mismanagement by the puja organisers.
Because the structure was about to collapse, a key part of the investigation is video footage of an announcement asking people to leave the pandal. Police had registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder over the stampede that broke out around 7:40 pm on Saturday amid heavy rain. The public prosecutor requested that the judge grant police custody, noting that the actions of these individuals led to the loss of 19 lives, leaving many families devastated.
He said his clients had no connection to the event organizers. “We are trying to identify who made the announcement and what prompted it,” an officer has said. There was no clear plan to manage the large number of visitors, and everything was handled verbally,” the officer further said, adding that security personnel were inadequate and that both the gates and the approach road were too narrow.
