Seven people were arrested for Saturday’s pandal stampede, but none from among the prominent BJP leaders whose names reportedly feature on the Chorebagan Sarbojanin Durgotsav Samity’s publicity material.
This has raised the question whether the police investigation would examine the role of all those associated with the event.
BJP Jorasanko MLA Bijoy Ojha has been identified in reports as the Puja committee chairman. Publicity material circulated by the committee also names the BJP’s north Calcutta district president, Tamaghna Ghosh, as its chief adviser and Debdeep Adhikari, nephew of chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, as its chief patron.
Calls and a text message to Ojha seeking his reactions about the tragedy went unanswered on Sunday.
Those arrested are Raj Kumar Sewda aka Raja, 48, the Puja committee secretary; Santanu Dubey, 55, the Puja committee vice-president; Biplab Mukherjee aka Joy, 48, who was involved in constructing the bamboo structure; Koushik Saha, 53, responsible for crowd control and checking VIP passes; Pintu Dey, 51, also engaged in crowd management; and private security supervisers Suman Chakraborty, 30, and Rajesh Pal, 29.
They were produced before a court on Sunday and remanded in 10 days’ police custody. The arrests followed a police investigation into the circumstances surrounding the disaster that claimed 19 lives and injured 25.
The investigation will have to establish the specific responsibilities of each accused and whether any act of negligence or omission contributed to the tragedy.
The police have registered a suo motu case of culpable homicide and attempt to culpable homicide at Girish Park police station.
Asphyxia, injuries
Preliminary post-mortem reports of the 19, whose bodies were examined at the Kolkata Police morgue, identified traumatic asphyxia caused by chest compression as the principal cause of
death.
What this means is that intense pressure on the chest, apparently sustained during the stampede, prevented the victims from breathing normally.
Police sources said some of the dead also suffered internal bleeding and organ rupture, indicating the severity of the physical force exerted on their bodies.
Many suffered injuries to their lungs, stomach, liver and pancreas, and some had head injuries, too, they said.
Suvendu has announced a compensation of ₹25 lakh for the next of kin of each of the dead, along with a government job for one member of the family. The government will provide ₹5 lakh to each of the injured and bear the full cost of their medical
treatment.
Suvendu said he would visit the homes of the dead on October 20 and 21 and hand over the compensation cheques.
Magistrates and senior police officers have been assigned to oversee the handover of the bodies to the families. Officials are expected to remain in contact with the families.
One of the dead was from Muzaffarpur in Bihar. The state government is arranging to send his body home.
Fourteen of the 25 injured have been admitted to Apollo Multispeciality Hospitals Kolkata.
“Five are in critical care and nine in the general ward. All of them are stable as of now,” a spokesperson for the hospital said.