Asansol: Three people including a child died and eight others were seriously injured after a stampede at the blanket distribution program attended by BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari here on Wednesday afternoon.
The incident happened in the Ramakrishna Dangal area of Ward Number 27 under the Asansol North Police Station area. Officials said that during the blanket distribution as Adhikari left with a lesser number of blankets, so to get the remaining blankets people rushed towards the stage causing a stampede.
However, later issuing a statement Adhikari claimed that the incident happened after he left the venue. Further in his statement, he said the police arrangement was satisfactory till he was there. He then alleged that police arrangement were withdrawn once he left the venue.
" When I was present at the venuwe the arrangements made by the Local Police were satisfactory. The police had deployed enough personnel for the crowd management and traffic movement as per the intimation provided by Smt. Chaitali Tiwari; Leader of the Opposition of the Asansol Municipal Corporation on 3rd December,2022," stated Adhikari.
" When I contacted the Organisers regarding this unfortunate accident, they told me that after I left the venue, the arrangements made by the police were withdrawn. Even the Civic Volunteers were asked to leave the venue by their superiors. I am not blaming anyone for this tragedy," said Adhikari.
Meanwhile, the Police Commissioner, Asansol-Durgapur, Sudheer Kumar Neelkantam claimed that there was no police permission for the said programme. Adhikari in a series of tweets also attached a photo of the police permission and captioned it "Intimation to Police regarding the event."
"Three persons were killed and five others were injured in the stampede. The injured people were hospitalized," a senior official of Asansol Durgapur Police Commissionerate said. Around 5 pm, the injured were taken to the Asansol District Hospital where two women were declared brought dead. The deceased were identified as Chandmani Debi (55) and Jhali Bauri (60) and Preeti Singh. Death tolls are expected to rise in the incident.
Asansol Deputy Mayor, Avijit Ghatak said that there should be an investigation into how the stampede took place. However, he denied knowledge on whether the programme was being conducted without police permission.
