On Friday morning, Bengaluru Police arrested Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s marketing head Nikhil Sosale in connection with the franchise’s victory parade stampede that occurred outside Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday. Eleven people were trampled to death, with scores suffering serious injuries.
According to a report in The Indian Express that quoted a senior police officer, RCB took an “unilateral decision” to hold the victory parade and didn’t obtain the permission “as mandated under the Karnataka Police Act for events requiring police security”.
“We were stretched thin in terms of resources. We were virtually handling four events simultaneously on that day — the arrival of the RCB team at the airport, their safe transport to the team hotel, to the government felicitation ceremony and finally to the RCB event at the Chinnaswamy Stadium,” the police officer was quoted as saying by the paper.
Some reports claim that the Bengaluru Police suggested RCB to hold the victory celebrations on Sunday, but the franchise put its foot down and insisted on having it on Wednesday itself. The FIR lodged at the Cubbon Park Police Stationstated that the victory parade from Vidhana Soudha to Chinnaswamy Stadium was announced by ‘royalchallengers.bengaluru’ on Instagram, notwithstanding the fact that police had rejected it.
Now, Sosale is the head of marketing and revenue for RCB at Diageo India. On the face of it, the decision to go-ahead with the celebrations should be beyond his pay grade and the decision has to come from the franchise’s top management. Is the top brass under the scanner as well? Also, Chinnaswamy Stadium couldn’t play host to the event without the permission from the Karnataka State Cricket Association.
From continuing with the celebration inside the stadium when people were dying outside to announcing the compensation for the deceased, RCB didn’t cover themselves with glory in the aftermath of the tragedy. On Thursday, a day after the incident, they put out a statement on X (formerly Twitter) saying: “As a mark of respect and a gesture of solidarity, RCB has announced a financial support of INR 10 lakh to each of the eleven families of the deceased. In addition, a fund called RCB Cares is also being created to support fans injured in this tragic incident.”
Human lives apparently were valued at Rs 10 lakh per person. To put things in perspective, RCB received a prize purse of Rs 20 crore for winning the 18th edition of the IPL. Every IPL franchise earns close to Rs 200 crore per season — broadcast rights share, money from central sponsors, franchise’s own sponsors and gate sales included.
On Thursday, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah suspended Bengaluru police commissioner B Dayananda, along with several other senior police officers. The Indian Express report quoted a source in the government who said that the police commissioner had informed the chief minister about their unpreparedness to hold the event at such short notice. But the police were ostensibly overruled.
Ramachandra Guha, the noted historian and author, who was also a member of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administors that ran the BCCI for a period, has called out the politicians and cricket administrators. “Karnataka’s ruling politicians and cricket administrators are jointly responsible for Wednesday’s tragedy. Their greedy lust for reflected glory led to it. To make an outstanding officer a scapegoat is reprehensible,” Guha posted on X on Friday.
As things stand, too many dots need to be joined in the whole saga. Hopefully, the judicial inquiry will get to the bottom of it.
For more exciting articles, follow RevSportz.