A day after a stampede at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durgotsab pandal in Kolkata killed 19 people and left several others injured, a Kolkata court on Sunday remanded seven arrested organisers and contractors to ten days of police custody, giving the city police until October 28 to interrogate them about the lapses that turned a festive evening into a tragedy. The police had sought fourteen days of custody, until November 1, but the Bankshall Court settled on the shorter remand.
The stampede broke out at around 7:40 pm on Saturday, October 17, at the Chorbagan pandal in the Girish Park area of north Kolkata, as heavy rain lashed the city and dense crowds had gathered for the Durga Puja festivities. Within minutes, the scene turned chaotic.
Nineteen people lost their lives in the crush, and several others were injured — the Deccan Chronicle put the number of injured at 25 — as panicked visitors tried to force their way in and out of the rain-drenched venue.
A newly surfaced video from inside the pandal added to the horror of the sequence: an announcement can be heard asking for the gates to be opened, with voices shouting that the pandal was collapsing, underscoring how quickly the structure and the crowd management failed.
The seven people taken into custody on Sunday represent the organising committee, the men who built the structure, and the personnel responsible for crowd control and security at the venue.
They have been identified as secretary Raj Kumar Sewda, also known as Raja, 48; vice-president Santanu Dubey, 55; Biplab Mukherjee, alias Joy, 48, who constructed the bamboo structure of the pandal; Koushik Saha, 53, who was in charge of crowd control and the checking of VIP passes; Pintu Dey, 51, who was also handling crowd control; and Suman Chakraborty, 30, and Rajesh Pal, 29, who were in charge of private security at the venue.
Fourteen other people have been detained for questioning, and investigating officers have told the court that they intend to interrogate the accused about whether anyone else was involved in the decisions that led to the disaster.
Kolkata Police registered a suo motu case at the Girish Park police station, booking the accused for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Sections 105, 110 and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
The registration of the case suo motu, without waiting for a complaint, signalled the seriousness with which the police treated the incident from the outset, even as questions mounted about how the stampede was allowed to happen in a city where Durga Puja crowd management has been a matter of long-standing public concern.
Inside the courtroom, the defence put up a stiff contest. Defence lawyer MD Yashim Raheman told the court that the accused were outsiders who had come only to witness the puja and had, in fact, joined in the rescue efforts after the stampede broke out. Another defence lawyer argued that his clients had no connection with the event's organisers and had been engaged in rescue and social service work.
The court, however, granted the police the custody they sought for interrogation, allowing investigators to probe the chain of responsibility behind the collapse of the venue's arrangements.
Even as the court proceedings unfolded, the administrative fallout continued. The Officer-in-Charge of the Girish Park Police Station, Sumit Kumar Ghosh, was removed from his post on Sunday. The order from Lalbazar, the headquarters of Kolkata Police, said Hirak Dalapati of the Detective Department would hold interim charge of the police station "in the interest of public service until further orders".
The removal of the station chief within 24 hours of the incident is a clear signal that the police leadership believes there were failures at the ground level on the night of the tragedy.
Prohibitory orders were also clamped down on the area. Authorities imposed restrictions under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, in and around the venue, effective from October 18 to October 20, barring large gatherings near the site while the investigation and the removal of the damaged structure proceed.
Investigators are now closely examining the crowd-management arrangements at the pandal, including how visitors were being admitted, what entry and exit routes existed, and how the space constraints of the venue were handled.
The question of space — a narrow, densely packed pandal in one of Kolkata's oldest neighbourhoods — is central to the probe, with officials examining whether the bamboo structure and the gates could withstand the pressure of the crowds that had gathered as the rain drove people to seek shelter and continue their puja visits.
The human cost of the tragedy was reflected in the response of the state government. The West Bengal government announced compensation of Rs 25 lakh for the family of each person killed, along with government jobs for the kin of the deceased.
It also announced the constitution of a fact-finding committee headed by a sitting judge of the Calcutta High Court to investigate the stampede and fix responsibility — a probe that will run parallel to the criminal investigation by the police.
The political attention the incident has drawn was evident on Sunday. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had spent Saturday night in Kolkata and cancelled his planned visits to other Durga Puja pandals in the wake of the tragedy, visited the injured at Apollo Gleneagles Hospital on Sunday. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari accompanied him; both leaders met the injured and their families after first offering puja at the Kalighat Temple earlier in the day.
The joint hospital visit underlined how the tragedy has cut across the state's political divide, at least in the immediate moment of grief.
The ripple effects extended beyond Chorbagan. Several major Durga Puja committees in the city — including Tala Pratyay, Alipore Sarbojanin, Chetla Agrani and Ballygunge Sarbojonin — were asked to temporarily stop admitting visitors, as authorities reviewed crowd-control arrangements at the city's biggest pandals. The precaution reflects the scale of the Durga Puja operation in Kolkata, where more than 3,000 celebrations are being held across the city this year.
With the festive week still under way, the police face the dual challenge of ensuring that the remaining celebrations pass off safely while pursuing accountability for the deaths at Chorbagan.
For the families of the nineteen people who died, the next ten days of police custody will be a test of whether the investigation delivers answers. The interrogation of the seven accused is expected to focus on who authorised the structure, who managed the gates and the entry passes, and who was responsible for deciding how many people could be allowed inside the pandal at any given time.
Whether others — from the organising committee, the civic authorities, or the police's own bandobast — will be drawn into the net is the question the investigators say they intend to answer.
(Reporting based on NDTV, Deccan Chronicle and The Economic Times.)