On the evening of September 27, local time, a political rally took place in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.At least 39 people died, including 17 women and nine children, and another 51 are still rescued in the ICU.
At about 7: 45 that night, a large number of people who participated in the rally crowded to the stage, and some people tripped over roadblocks, which led to a stampede.
According to reports,The political rally was initiated by the famous Indian Tamil-speaking film industry actor Vigger, who is campaigning for his founded political party to participate in local elections to be held early next year.
The scene is serious, the protagonist is 7 hours late
According to Venkatraman, acting police chief of Tamil Nadu, the organizers of the rally initially expected the number of attendees to be about 10,000, and applied for a venue and deployed more than 500 police officers based on this figure.He said: "In the end, nearly 27,000 people gathered at the scene!" This is nearly three times the number originally expected by the organizers.
Several witnesses described the scene at that time as "seriously overcrowded and overcrowded". A witness named Nanda Kumar said, "We were at the scene, and no one could control the crowd at all."
On-site photos and videos showed that the mountainous sea inside and outside the gathering site left hardly any passages or buffering space.
Officials and families of the victims said:The rally was scheduled to start at 12 noon, but the main character Vijay did not arrive at the scene until around 7 p.m.This meant tens of thousands of fanatical supporters, including a large number of women and children, passively waited for more than seven hours in an overcrowded environment, lacking enough food and water.
A family member of a victim named Zakir said: “Virgo should have arrived at 9 a.m. but he didn’t come because of this, the more people gathered.”
The long wait killed people's patience, and the anxiety at the scene kept accumulating. Fans surged in the direction of the stage as Vijay's vehicle arrived.
According to the survivors, when Vigger's fleet appeared, the crowd began to "press sharply" toward the center stage. The front row was pushed forward by the back of the crowd. The crowd was crowded, making it "even difficult to breathe".
There were also unsubstantiated claims that "the police used batons (a way to disperse the crowd)" at the scene, which aggravated the panic and confusion.
The crowd out of control, Modi calls for government compensation
Before the stampede happened, there was a chaotic picture. At that time, when Vijay was speaking on the stage, he suddenly interrupted his speech. When he saw that the people in the front row of the audience were unwell because of the extreme crowding, he picked up the water bottle and handed it down, and called on everyone to keep calm. He also helped to find a girl who was separated from her family through a microphone. Just as Vijay called on everyone to calm down on stage, "a stampede happened".
An eyewitness named Suriya said that the scene was so crowded that "ambulances couldn't get in at all, people didn't even have room to stand, and it took very, very long to lift the injured out."
After the accident,Prime Minister Modi expressed his condolences on social media.He said: “The unfortunate incident that occurred during a political rally in Tamil Nadu, Karul, is deeply saddening and my heart is with the family of those who have lost their loved ones.”
The Government of Tamil Nadu ordered an investigation.It also announced that the government will provide the family of each victim with 1 million rubles ($80,000) of condolences, while the injured will receive assistance of 100,000 rubles.
M.K. Stalin, Prime Minister of Tamil Nadu, said at a press conference: "In the history of our state, there have never been so many people killed in the activities of a political party, and such tragedies should never happen again in the future.
Vigger, who was taken by car to the airport to take a plane, subsequently issued a statement saying that he was "hearted and suffering words cannot express, unbearable pain and sadness."
Red Star journalist Deng Xiaobo