When joy turned to horror for Bengaluru fans celebrating team's IPL win

Yahoo

05-06-2025

When Shamili left her home in India's Bengaluru city on Wednesday, it wasn't to see her favourite cricket team - she isn't even a fan of the game.
But the buzz around the Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB's) Indian Premier League victory parade - the home team won the tournament for the first time - had swept through the city like wildfire.
Wearing an RCB jersey with "18 Virat" on the back - a nod to Virat Kohli, the city's favourite cricket icon - Shamili joined her sister and friends near the Chinnaswamy Stadium, looking forward to celebrations.
What she didn't expect was to get caught in a terrifying crush.
The victory parade turned deadly when surging crowds - far beyond what authorities expected - led to a horrific crush that killed 11 people and injured dozens more.
Survivors like Shamili are now grappling with trauma, pain and a sense of disbelief after the celebration spiralled into catastrophe.
"I kept saying, 'let's go, let's go' - the crowd was getting out of control," Shamili recalled, sitting on a bed at the government-run Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital. "The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. People were walking over me. I thought I was going to die."
She is not alone. Many who had come just to soak in the atmosphere - fans, families, curious onlookers - found themselves caught in a tide of bodies as crowds swelled beyond control.
Police had expected no more than 100,000 people. In reality, Karnataka's chief minister Siddaramaiah said, the crowd surged to 200,000-300,000. The stadium, with a capacity of 32,000, was overwhelmed long before the team arrived.
Videos from before the crush showed people climbing trees and trying to scale the stadium walls.
Haneef Mohammed, an engineering student, told BBC Hindi that he had no intention of going inside because he didn't have a pass or ticket.
"I was just standing and watching the crowds near the main gate. Suddenly, people started running all around and the police started hitting people with their lathis," he said.
Police in India often wield lathis - long bamboo sticks - to try and control crowds.
Mr Mohammed got hit on the head with a lathi and started bleeding. He says the police immediately arranged for a vehicle to take him to the hospital.
The ages of the 11 victims range from 13 to 43 years.
The youngest, Divyanshi, was a Class 9 student who had come to the stadium with her mother and other family members. Other victims include college students and a young tech worker who had come to the stadium with her colleagues.
A doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity said that most of them were "brought dead to hospital" due to suffocation or broken ribs. The massive crowds had delayed ambulances getting to the site of the crush.
Even as chaos and panic ensued on the roads around the Chinnaswamy stadium, the RCB team went inside the stadium after being felicitated on the footsteps of the Vidhana Soudha - the seat of power in Karnataka - by the governor, chief minister and other ministers.
"They went on a victory lap around the stadium. Inside the stadium, there was no sign that anything had happened outside,'' said a young man who spoke on condition of anonymity.
IPL chairman Arun Dhumal said he did not know who had planned the event in Bengaluru and that RCB officials inside the stadium were not aware of the crush until they got phone calls.
In a statement on X, RCB said it was "deeply anguished by the unfortunate incidents".
"Immediately upon being made aware of the situation, we promptly amended our programme and followed the guidance and advice of the local administration," it said.
"At a loss for words. Absolutely gutted," star player Kohli wrote on Instagram.
But questions still remain over how and why the event was organised.
"Normally, the felicitation of a team should be done in a controlled environment. But here, there appeared to be no preparation," a relative of an injured person at the Bowring Hospital said.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has announced a magisterial enquiry into the incident.
"A moment of joy has turned into sorrow," he said on Wednesday.
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