In their report to the high court, the Karnataka government has said that Royal Challengers Bengaluru went ahead with holding the victory parade at the Chinnaswamy stadium after winning the IPL without securing permission from Bengaluru’s city police. Ultimately, the parade resulted in a stampede, killing 11 people and injuring over 50.
As per the report, RCB told the police about holding a parade on June 4 but didn’t officially apply to get the green signal. Ideally, the Bengaluru police should have got a seven-day notice, with details on estimated crowd, possible hurdles, traffic management, and preparedness for an emergency situation. The report further added that in the absence of such relevant information, the licence-permitting jurisdiction couldn’t give its consent.
Despite all of this, RCB went ahead with announcing the celebrations via its social media channels on June 4 at 7.01 AM. It also noted that the entry to the parade would be free. The government report also observed that a post from RCB that had cricketer Virat Kohli was up on their social media platforms at 8.55 AM, and that further motivated the fans to come to the parade.
“This post mentioned, for the first and only time, that free passes (limited entry) were available on shop.royalchallengers.com, and until this point, there had been no information regarding the disbursement of passes, implying that the event was open to all based on RCB’s prior posts,” the report pointed out.
The public response was extraordinary. Authorities pointed out that around 3 lakh fans assembled for the celebrations. Incidentally, the metro recorded 9.66 lakh passengers on that particular day. “Around 3,00,000 individuals gathered in this limited space, far exceeding the stadium’s capacity of merely 35,000. Such a crowd concentrated at the entry gates of the stadium following posts made by the RCB/organisers on their official handles stating that entry to the event would be free for all,” the report said.
With fans coming in droves, it resulted in chaos. Stadium gates were not opened as per the scheduled time. In addition to it, the lack of coordination in relation to gate management meant that the crowd tried to break open doors.
“As restless crowds gathered at the gates, the situation deteriorated further when the organisers/RCB/DNA/KSCA responsible for gate management failed to open the gates at the appropriate time and in an unsynchronised manner. This prompted the crowd to force their way into the stadium by breaking open Gate Nos. 1, 2, and 21, due to complete mismanagement by the organisers,” it said.
At that juncture, the authorities thought of calling off the event but decided to go ahead with it, fearing that it would result in more chaos. “This tactical decision considered the evolving ground situation, crowd psychology, the massive scale of gathering, and the information asymmetry amongst the assembled masses. The risk of large-scale rioting both within the stadium premises and throughout Bengaluru necessitated this careful balancing approach, prioritizing overall public safety over immediate event cessation,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka cabinet has approved the filing of a criminal case against both KSCA and RCB.