Retired Calcutta high court judge Anindita Roy Saraswati will head a six-member special investigation team (SIT) probing the deaths of 19 people in a stampede at Kolkata’s Durga Puja pandal on October 17, the West Bengal government announced on Wednesday. HT saw a copy of the government order.
Nobody would have died had someone not announced over the loudspeaker that the pandal was about to collapse. The state has also promised a job for one member of each family. “I visited the pandal and inquired about what happened that evening.
Because of human error and not because a crowd entered the pandal to take shelter from rain,” Adhikari said, the incident happened. The chief minister visited the grieving families on Tuesday and Wednesday and distributed monetary compensation announced by the state and the Centre.
The chief minister announced after the tragedy that his government would appeal to the Calcutta high court to allow the formation of a probe committee headed by a sitting high court judge. The Mamata All India Trinamool Congress (MAITC) and the Left parties targeted chief minister Adhikari, after his nephew, Depdeep Adhikari, was involved in the puja as its patron, along with BJP’s north Calcutta unit president Tamoghna Ghosh and the party’s Jorasanko MLA Vijay Ojha. A division bench led by Chief Justice Ravindra V Ghuge directed the government to set up a commission of inquiry headed by a retired judge of the court.
Because of the stampede at the Chorebagan Sarbojanin Durgotsav Samity pandal on Saturday, which killed 19 people, including five children, and injured 25 others, the Suvendu Adhikari-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government drew flak from the opposition five months after coming to power in West Bengal.
“The SIT shall submit its report and recommendations to the government in three months from today,” a senior state official said, requesting anonymity. He also said no officer of the Kolkata police, the city fire brigade and the municipal corporation would be included in the probe team since they were supposed to ensure the safety of people at the pandal. Justice Ghuge said that, according to Supreme Court directives, a sitting judge cannot preside over such an inquiry.
The state’s appeal was heard by the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday during the hearing of a public interest litigation demanding an impartial inquiry.
