Kolkata stampede: Death in the time of Durga Puja

On the evening of October 17, Subham Sonkar, 32, was out pandal-hopping with a cousin, both of them dressed in festive finery. It was Saptami, the day of elaborate ritual worship of goddess Durga, when crowds throng the pandals. As a sudden, sharp spell of rain sent people rushing into the Chorbagan Sorbojanin Durga Puja pandal in north Kolkata, pandemonium broke out and the two cousins got separated. While Sonkar died in the crush, the cousin she was with survived.

Vishal Bhel, another cousin, was not at the pandal at the time. He received a call from an unknown number asking him to reach Medical College Kolkata, about one-and-a-half kilometres away from the pandal. Bhel stood shell-shocked outside the emergency building around midnight, having just seen Sonkar’s body. “People walked all over her when she fell down,” he said. “Her whole body was bruised, and her face looked like she had been in a lot of pain. I can’t believe how a happy Durga Puja moment turned into her last moment on earth in just a second.”

Scores of family members of the injured and deceased waited in nervous anticipation and grief as the rest of the city continued to celebrate. A woman sitting at the gate of the emergency building was inconsolable. “Call me Ma one last time,” she cried. “I have nothing left to live for. Please call me Ma one last time, I beg you.”

A few hours earlier, her daughter, Piyali Pramanik, 25, had made a video call to her mother when she was on her way to pandal-hop. Three members of the family died in the tragedy: Pramanik; her sister-in-law, 37-year-old Tager Bhej, and Bhej’s child, 14-year-old Sandip. Both Pramanik and Bhej were from Purba Bardhaman district and had travelled 100 km to participate in the festivities in West Bengal’s capital, where every year, temporary structures are turned into elaborate works of art, streets glow with lights, the sound of drums fills the air, and food stalls sell delicious Bengali bhog (food offering).

The stampede also claimed the lives of both parents of 25-year-old Pritish Ghosh, a resident of Kolkata’s Baranagar area. Dilip Ghosh (59) and Dipali Ghosh (45) had gone to the puja pandal; neither survived. Moved by the plight of the young man, West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari offered to become his guardian.

Among the 19 people who lost their lives in the stampede that occurred at 7:40 p.m., according to the police, 13 were female and six were male. Four were minors. Twenty-five others were injured. Preliminary post-mortem reports at the Kolkata Police morgue attributed most of the deaths to traumatic asphyxia caused by chest compression.

Mismanagement at the pandal

The Chorbagan Sorbojanin Durga Puja pandal was inaugurated by Chief Minister Adhikari on October 12 and generated a lot of attention on social media as a must-visit spot for puja revellers. The theme of the pandal was ‘Aarav-Beyond Sound’. In the narrow by-lanes of north Kolkata, the artist of the pandal had created an even narrower, darker space, inviting revellers to experience silence in the presence of the goddess. Inside the pandal, the grey idol of goddess Durga rose nearly 10 metres above the ground. With 10 hands, two of them holding lotus flowers, she sat silently in padmasana or the lotus pose.

The pandal was in its 91st year. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders had taken over the organising committee only three months ago, following the party’s victory in West Bengal. The pandal’s publicity material, widely circulated in the public domain, identifies BJP Jorasanko MLA Vijay Ojha as the puja committee chairman; BJP north Kolkata district president Tamaghna Ghosh as its chief adviser; and Debdeep Adhikari, nephew of Chief Minister Adhikari, as its chief patron.

Several eyewitnesses and Adhikari claimed that a misleading announcement by the pandal organisers, accompanied by whistle-blowing, had triggered panic. “You all should leave at once; the pandal can collapse any moment,” said the announcer, according to videos making the rounds on social media. In another set of videos, people can be seen holding umbrellas and entering the pandal minutes before the crowd crush.

The road leading to the pandal was not more than 16 feet wide and a part of it had been bifurcated for the movement of VIPs. “They only allowed VIPs to walk through, so where was the average person supposed to go?” an angry resident, who had helped in rescue and relief efforts before government officials arrived, said to the media.

Rajesh Srivastava, a resident of Agarpara in Kolkata, who survived the stampede, said people had been packed inside the pandal for almost 30 minutes. “There was major mismanagement by the organisers. When it started to rain, more people rushed into the pandal. They were pushing in from one side, while bodies lay on the other,” said Srivastava, who was discharged from a private hospital on October 19. “There were no policemen at the site for at least 45 minutes.”

Runu Das, a local resident of the Chorbagan area, said that the injured were taken away on bikes, in taxis, and in cars belonging to local residents. “There were no policemen and there was no security. The organisers made wrong announcements and spread panic, which led to the stampede,” she said.

Nibha Kumari, from Muzaffarpur in Bihar, lost her husband, Abhishek Srivastava, 38, and their 7-year-old son, Ayansh. Lying on a hospital bed in Kolkata, Kumari cried while regretting her decision to go pandal-hopping. “There were no policemen to help transport my husband and child to the hospital,” she said.

The West Bengal government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) led by Justice (retd.) Anindita Roy Saraswati to conduct an impartial and comprehensive inquiry into the tragedy. On October 22, five days after the crush, the chairperson and other members of the SIT visited the puja pandal. She pointed out that the lighting inside was woefully inadequate. “It goes without saying that the entrance and exit to the pandal are very narrow, and if a lot of people enter the pandal, an incident is bound to happen,” she told mediapersons.

On the same day, the Kolkata Police arrested Sanjeev Raha, who had allegedly been responsible for making announcements at the pandal when the stampede broke out.

By October 23, they had arrested nine people in connection with a suo motu case registered at Girish Park police station. Those arrested and charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, among other offences, included Durga Puja committee secretary Raj Kumar Sewda (48), vice-president Santanu Dubey (55), and others responsible for the construction of the pandal’s bamboo structure, crowd control and management, and private security.

The police did not take any of the senior BJP leaders named in the pandal’s publicity material into custody.

A string of controversies

The Durga Puja celebrations were meant to be special for the BJP government, which had come to power in May this year with a two-thirds majority, ending the previous government’s 15-year tenure. Chief Minister Adhikari repeatedly stated that the celebrations would follow tradition and the ritual calendar, accusing the previous government of violating religious practices. CM Adhikari said that the number of Durga Puja pandals across the State had increased by 25%, from 45,000 in 2025 to 57,400 in 2026.

However, the festival has been mired in controversy from the outset in 2026. Almost a month before the celebrations, Dhirendra Shastri, alias Bageshwar Baba, a godman from Madhya Pradesh, urged Bengalis to switch to a vegetarian diet during Durga Puja.

His remarks did not go down well in the State. A bonedibari (aristocratic household) in north Kolkata’s Sovabazar area said that its Durga Puja would continue according to traditions established by its ancestors, and that it would not abide by any diktats from “outsiders”.

“She (Durga) is our Ma, our goddess. This is our tradition. Why would we listen to someone who does not belong to this tradition,” asked Prabir Krishna Deb, an eighth-generation descendant of Raja Naba Krishna Deb, who started the Sobhabazar Rajbari pujas.

Deb belongs to the choto torof (younger branch) of the family, whose pujas began in 1790. He added that while some of their offerings to the goddess are vegetarian, the family eats mutton and fish during the festivities.

The widespread anger against Shastri’s remarks prompted the BJP leadership, including the Chief Minister, to publicly consume a fish offering to convey the message that no one could lecture Bengalis on their dietary preferences.

A few weeks ago, the city’s flyovers were painted in rainbow colours as part of the Durga Puja beautification drive. Urban Development Minister Agnimitra Paul, who oversaw the painting, had described it as a symbol of brotherhood and love. However, when motorcyclists began skidding on them, the administration went into damage-control mode, attempting to scrub off the paint and install cat’s-eye reflectors. Paul said, “The paint that was used was supposed to be anti-skid paint. But since a few bikes still skid, we are now removing the paint. We are also probing how the accidents took place.”

The Durga Puja festivities were also marked by attacks on temporary book stalls set up by Left parties at puja pandals. The Left parties have a tradition of setting up book stalls at the pandals, even though their supporters do not participate in the ritual aspects of Durga Puja. While State BJP president Samik Bhattacharya and Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta denounced the attacks on the stalls, Chief Minister Adhikari said that Left parties did not believe in Durga Puja or any other Hindu festival and had no business setting up book stalls at the pandals.

However, no controversy cast as long a shadow over Durga Puja in 2026 as the Chorbagan stampede. Celebrations were cancelled at the Chorbagan pandal, where the tragedy took place, and the site and pandal came under investigation. Adhikari visited the families of each of the deceased and handed them compensation cheques of ₹25 lakh.

When tragedy struck the north Kolkata puja pandal, Adhikari and senior BJP leaders were receiving Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had several festival-related events lined up for October 18. Shah had to cancel his plans and return to Delhi that day after meeting the injured. The Chief Minister continued to emphasise how, unlike the previous government, his government had extended all possible support to those caught up in the stampede. Yet, the prevailing sentiment after the tragedy was that the State had never witnessed such a high number of casualties in a stampede during Durga Puja.

“This is a complete administrative failure,” said Suman Roy Chaudhuri, a senior Congress leader. “As a north Kolkata resident, I can tell you that there were hardly any police personnel on the ground. This is a sorrow-filled puja. History will remember this.”

Beyond religiosity: on the Kolkata pandal tragedy

No joy left

Durga Puja is the most auspicious time of the year for Bengalis, and deaths during the festivities have left people across the State heartbroken. One of the most iconic depictions of the loss of a loved one around the time of the festival is the death of young Durga in Satyajit Ray’s classic Pather Panchali, shortly before Durga Puja.

From the morning of October 18, relatives of the deceased began queuing up outside the Kolkata Police mortuary, behind another famous Durga Puja pandal at Mohammad Ali Park. A government official called out the names of the deceased, matching them with the serial numbers on the hearse vans as the bodies were loaded.

People looked on, shaking their heads in disbelief. Tears rolled down their cheeks. Amid the smell of the bodies, the strong scent of incense sticks hung heavy in the air.

“We are all in mourning. There is no joy left in Durga Puja,” a bystander said at the morgue.

At Medical College Kolkata, Biswajit Biswas, the father of Tamina Biswas, 18, still cannot believe that his daughter is dead. With his wife by his side, he said, “How will we survive after this? There will be no Durga Puja for us ever again.”

shrabana.chatterjee@thehindu.co.in; shivsahay.s@thehindu.co.in

This story was edited by Radhika Santhanam