Our Bureau
Bengaluru
The tragic incident that took place in the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore where 11 innocent lives were lost in a stampede that was caused due to mismanagement of the crowd. The Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) this Friday has reached out to the Karnataka High Court for an urgent hearing against the First Information Report (FIR) filed against them after the stampede incident.
As per the reports, the petition which was filed by KSCA president Raghuram Bhat, secretary A Shankar, and treasurer ES Jairam reports that there has been a misunderstanding in the FIR that is filed against them. The FIR has pinned the responsibilities of the mishap on the wrong organisation and according to them is a “serious failure of justice”. KSCA claimed that the celebration event was organised on the orders of the Karnataka government and they should be held responsible majorly.
According to the reports, the petition claims, “Celebrating the victory was in fact at the call of the Government. It was held at the Vidhana Soudha in the presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, his deputy DK Shivakumar, and several Cabinet ministers. Senior bureaucrats and senior police officials were also in attendance.”
Not only that, the KSCA has claimed that the responsibility of crowd control and management was on the shoulders of the management team of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, the event organisers and the police. KSCA’s role in this whole situation is to grant them the venue to organise the event and govern Karnataka cricket. The organisation is strictly limited to cricket administration and stadium management, and does not extend to public-facing or crowd-related matters
The petition claimed, “In any case, framing the Petitioners as accused is a serious failure of justice at the hands of police and Government. The offences alleged cannot be traced to any actions of the Petitioners even remotely. The KSCA Managing Committee only handles the venue of Chinnaswamy Stadium on rentals and controls cricket in Karnataka. It does not deal with the audience, spectators, or fans.”
This petition has come after there were reports that Police arrested four officials from RCB but two officials from KSCA have escaped their grasp and were not found in their houses. Both Shankar and Jairam have gone missing ever since and the police are trying to trace them.
