Nineteen people were killed and several others injured during a stampede at a pandal in Kolkata.
From the crush at Deshapriya Park in 2015 to the crowd surge at Sreebhumi in 2021, previous incidents had exposed the risks of overwhelming footfall. On Saturday evening, October 17, those concerns returned at Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durgotsab Samity’s pandal in north Kolkata, where a rush for shelter after heavy rain left 19 people dead and 25 injured. In 2015, an 88-foot Durga idol billed as the world’s tallest brought more than a million revellers towards Deshapriya Park, choking roads across south Kolkata. In 2021, Sreebhumi Sporting Club’s replica of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa attracted lakhs of visitors, triggering traffic congestion on VIP Road and leaving several people injured in a stampede-like situation. At Chorbagan, the warning came too late for 19 people. The question now is whether the lessons of 2015, 2021 and the near-misses since then will finally translate into arrangements that prevent another festival from ending in tragedy.
People who had finished viewing the installation were reluctant to leave because it was pouring outside, according to eyewitness accounts. Because the risks of crowding were unknown, but in circumstances where rain, a narrow approach, restricted movement and the difficulty of leaving a crowded interior appear to have converged, the tragedy occurred not. You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Kolkata | Silver Rate in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata | Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Petrol Price in Kolkata | Diesel Price in Kolkata | CNG Price in Kolkata | LPG Price in Kolkata Stay updated with the latest Kolkata news.
State minister Umesh Rai said the darkness had added to the difficulties but was not, by itself, responsible for the stampede. KOLKATA: A decade of close calls at some of Kolkata’s biggest Durga Puja attractions has ended in one of the city’s deadliest pandal tragedies. Eleven people were injured in the rush, and several others complained of suffocation. Police eventually stopped visitors from entering the park. The pandal was shut to visitors on Ashtami night. This year, the warning signs at Chorbagan were different in detail but familiar in consequence. The pandal was located inside the narrow Radha Madhab Saha Lane, had been attracting heavy footfall for several days and required visitors to descend a flight of stairs from an upper deck to a lower level near the exit. In fact, temporary restrictions on crowd movement had been imposed several times over the previous four days to stagger the influx. Yet the pressure remained difficult to manage, raising questions about whether the organisers’ arrangements were adequate to handle the crowds safely. Visitors sought shelter inside, while those already inside struggled to leave. The resulting congestion blocked the movement of those behind them. An eyewitness described a sudden push, followed by people stumbling down a flight of stairs near the exit as others fell over them. The pandal’s layout is now under scrutiny. Visitors had to descend stairs from an upper deck to a lower level near the exit, creating a potential bottleneck. The narrow lane outside further restricted the movement of people waiting to enter and those attempting to leave. The interiors were also dimly lit as part of the theme. Chorbagan has brought those concerns back into sharp focus. The SIT will determine the sequence of events and establish accountability. For the city, however, the immediate task extends beyond the investigation: the remaining days of the festival require organisers to reassess their venues, stop admissions when crowd pressure rises, keep exits unobstructed and ensure that police and emergency teams can act without delay. A pandal can be shut and a crowd dispersed after a warning. Download the TOI App.
On Saturday, thousands were waiting in the narrow lane when the rain began.
The result was a fatal crush that left 19 people dead, including 13 women and a child, according to hospital sources cited in reports. The Deshapriya Park crisis unfolded on October 18, 2015, during the run-up to the main days of Durga Puja. The organisers had commissioned an idol measuring 88 feet, attracting nationwide publicity and drawing visitors well before the formal puja days. Eleven people were injured, according to a Times of India report published on October 19, 2015. It took an average of 90 minutes to cover less than half a kilometre on the Rashbehari Connector. Police stopped entry into the park indefinitely on the evening of October 18, citing safety and security concerns. At the annual pre-Puja meeting in August 2016, Banerjee warned organisers against repeating the lapses. In 2021, Sudipto Kumar, secretary of the Deshapriya Park Puja Committee, said nearly half the Puja budget was being spent on barricading and crowd-prevention measures. Sreebhumi Sporting Club in Lake Town drew huge crowds in 2021 with a 145-foot pandal inspired by Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Yet, in 2026, the central question was no longer simply whether police could close a crowded pandal in time. The Chorbagan tragedy unfolded on Maha Saptami, October 17, when a sudden spell of rain turned a crowded evening into a disaster. The police have since registered a suo motu case under Sections 105, 110 and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Following the 2015 Deshapriya Park crisis, organisers committed to keeping gates open, removing stalls and planning crowd-control arrangements months in advance. After the 2021 Sreebhumi shutdown, the committee said it would begin planning visitor movement from March and consult crowd-management experts. In 2025, Kolkata Police issued a stringent safety notice to Santosh Mitra Square after a near-stampede the previous year. The conditions included wider entrance and exit paths, at least 60 CCTV cameras, 250 volunteers during peak hours, public-address systems, proper barricading and clear signage. The Deshapriya Park crisis in 2015 prompted a shift towards advance planning and spending on crowd prevention. Sreebhumi’s shutdown in 2021 reinforced the need to coordinate visitor movement with police months before the festival. The 2025 safety directive to Santosh Mitra Square set out specific requirements for cameras, volunteers, exits, barricades and communication.
Other organisers also announced changes.
Deshapriya Park’s committee said it would keep all gates open and remove stalls from inside the park to facilitate the movement of visitors. A senior police officer said the organisers first switched off the lights to deter visitors and temporarily closed all three channels leading to the pandal. Sujit Bose, former state fire minister and chief patron of the Sreebhumi puja committee, said they would plan visitor entry and exit from March in coordination with police and consult experts in crowd management. The wet ground also made it difficult to maintain a firm foothold, according to a weather official quoted by TOI. Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said preliminary information suggested that an announcement by a private security agency and whistles blown by guards might have triggered the rush. He said volunteers removed barricades and allowed people to enter, apparently fearing that visitors might leave. He said he could not find volunteers, police personnel or organisers coming forward to help. Doctors subsequently told him that his wife had died. Sabyasachi Chowdhury of the puja committee said volunteers raised concerns, police assessed the situation and an evacuation was ordered. Tala Prattoy said it would reassess illumination and entry-exit points and reopen only after a detailed crowd-management assessment with police and other authorities. Santosh Mitra Square said it had widened entry-exit points and was reducing the number of visitors allowed inside.
The state government has constituted a special investigation team to establish what went wrong, while Kolkata Police have registered a suo motu case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The pandal opened to visitors on Tritiya. Within two days, the crowds had grown far beyond what the arrangements could handle. By Panchami, more than a million revellers had converged on the area, with the rush spilling out of the park and choking Rashbehari Avenue, Sarat Bose Road and adjoining roads. The situation became dangerous as the ground filled to capacity. Children and elderly visitors struggled to breathe, people fell in the rush and several complained of suffocation. The problem was not confined to the pandal. Traffic across a three-kilometre radius came to a standstill, while buses and Metro trains disgorged large numbers of passengers heading towards the attraction. Kolkata Police commissioner Surajit Kar Purkayastha acknowledged that the force had failed to anticipate the sudden surge. The decision came after officers assessed the venue and concluded that the organisers had not created adequate infrastructure for the crowds generated by the idol’s publicity. The closure did not immediately ease the congestion, as visitors continued to crowd the surrounding roads. The police chief appealed to people to avoid Deshapriya Park and visit other pandals instead. Former chief minister Mamata Banerjee subsequently criticised the organisers for shutting most of the park’s gates, saying visitors had found themselves trapped without sufficient room to leave. She also pointed to the absence of clear communication with police and the lack of space for ambulances and fire engines. The committee also changed its approach to planning. The lesson appeared clear: A crowd-pulling attraction needed to be planned around the number of people it could safely accommodate, rather than relying on the arrangements used in previous years. Six years after Deshapriya Park, another elaborate installation exposed the limits of crowd management during the festival. Visitors began arriving in large numbers from Tritiya, with lakhs of revellers converging on the venue and traffic on VIP Road thrown out of gear. The crowd also created concerns beyond the immediate surroundings. The pandal’s laser lights drew complaints from Kolkata airport over their potential to distract pilots during landing. The laser show was stopped after Saptami. By Ashtami, overcrowding had become so difficult to manage that Bidhannagar Police ordered the organisers to shut the pandal to visitors. But people waiting for hours began jostling, creating a stampede-like situation. Authorities also made pedestrian subways one-way for people leaving the venue, but these measures failed to resolve the congestion. The Deshapriya Park committee’s experience offered another precedent. It was whether the arrangements inside and around a venue could prevent people from being trapped when conditions changed suddenly. The pandal, situated inside the narrow Radha Madhab Saha Lane in north Kolkata, had been attracting large crowds from the day it opened. Temporary restrictions had reportedly been imposed on crowd movement several times over the preceding four days to stagger visitors, but the arrangements proved inadequate when the rush intensified. Thousands were waiting in the lane when the skies opened up. Visitors already inside tried to move towards the exit, but those outside sought shelter from the rain and pushed towards the pandal. The rain compounded these vulnerabilities. A sudden downpour that continued for nearly an hour forced visitors to seek shelter inside the pandal. There are also questions about the way crowd movement was managed. Eyewitnesses alleged that announcements about entry, exit and movement were inadequate or confusing. Residents questioned the police presence, claiming personnel were concentrated near the VIP entrance. These accounts are part of the ongoing investigation and have not yet established a definitive sequence of responsibility. Ram Sarkar, whose wife Arati died in the stampede, described how the crowd pressure escalated after the rain began. Inside the dark, crowded pandal, he could barely breathe before people began pushing from behind. After he fell and became separated from his wife, Sarkar searched among the people lying on the ground. An ambulance took more than an hour to arrive, he alleged. Seven people, including puja committee secretary Raj Kumar Sewda alias Raja and vice-president Santanu Dubey, have been arrested. The other accused include people associated with the construction of the bamboo structure, crowd control and private security. Investigators are examining CCTV footage, questioning organisers and security personnel, and assessing the arrangements for entry, exit and emergency response. The tragedy at Chorbagan was followed by an immediate shutdown of several prominent pandals across Kolkata. The administration asked crowd-pulling pujas, including Tala Prattoy, Alipore Sarbojanin, Chetla Agrani and Ballygunge Sarbojonin, to stop admitting visitors. College Square and Md Ali Park also shut their gates, while Santosh Mitra Square restricted entry. The measures were intended to prevent another surge while the administration reviewed the situation. At Chetla Agrani, a second potential crisis was averted when organisers and police responded to a sharp spell of rain that caused a crowd build-up. The organisers closed the entry gates, opened the exits and removed barricades to allow people to disperse. The response offered a stark contrast to the accounts emerging from Chorbagan: when a crowd begins to build beyond manageable levels, stopping fresh entry while keeping exit routes clear can help prevent pressure from increasing. Allen Park stopped its music and laser show. Suruchi Sangha increased its volunteers and asked visitors to keep moving instead of gathering in front of the idol. Stalls near entrances and exits, as well as Ferris wheels and similar amusement rides, were prohibited. The committee was also asked to provide a mitigation plan and discuss its implementation with police. These measures underline the elements that authorities and organisers have repeatedly identified as essential: clearly separated entry and exit movement, sufficient lighting, unobstructed routes, enough trained personnel, effective communication and advance coordination with police. The investigation will have to establish precisely how the crowd surged and who failed to discharge their duties. First, the venue’s physical constraints needed to be central to the crowd-management plan. A pandal inside a narrow lane, with a staircase near the exit, required arrangements that prevented people entering from meeting those trying to leave. The number of visitors admitted at any one time also needed to reflect the space available inside. Second, rain needed to be treated as a potential crowd-control emergency, not merely a weather inconvenience. When visitors seek shelter, the number of people inside can rise rapidly even if the normal entry flow has been controlled. A plan to stop admissions, disperse queues and direct people towards safe shelter could have reduced the pressure on the entrance. Third, removing barricades or allowing additional visitors inside while people were trying to exit could intensify a crush. The accounts from Chorbagan suggest that the direction and timing of crowd movement will be crucial to the investigation. The Chetla Agrani response, where entry was stopped, exits were opened and barricades were removed to facilitate dispersal, shows the importance of prioritising evacuation over continued admission. Fourth, lighting and communication cannot be treated as decorative or secondary considerations. Visitors need to see the route ahead, identify exits and respond to instructions. Conflicting announcements, unexplained whistles or sudden changes in entry rules can add to confusion when a crowd is already under pressure. Finally, emergency response arrangements need to be capable of functioning when roads and access lanes are congested. The accounts of injured people being carried out by locals and families waiting for ambulances raise questions about access for rescue teams, the availability of trained personnel and the speed with which victims can be moved to hospital. None of these measures can guarantee that an accident will never occur. But the previous incidents show that crowd surges, blocked exits, traffic congestion and last-minute closures were not unforeseeable risks. They had already featured in the Deshapriya Park and Sreebhumi episodes, and authorities had repeatedly called for wider exits, advance planning and better coordination. Durga Puja’s elaborate pandals are a major attraction, drawing visitors from across Kolkata and beyond. The scale of the crowds is part of the festival’s appeal, but it also makes the safe movement of people a basic responsibility of organisers and authorities.
The committee also began meeting Kolkata Police’s traffic department at Lalbazar six months before the festival to share details of its theme. The episode prompted organisers to acknowledge that crowd control needed to begin well before the festival. Its organisers had already shifted to earlier planning, detailed coordination with traffic police and a greater emphasis on barricading. The steps echo measures that had been discussed after earlier incidents. But the available accounts point to several risks that could have been addressed before the gates opened.