TVK rally in Karur on Saturday
KARUR: At least 39 people died in a stampede during TVK leader Vijay’s campaign in Karur on Saturday evening, Tamil Nadu health minister Ma Subramanian said. The dead included 10 children, 17 women, and 12 men. More than 80 people have been admitted to hospitals.Though the rush to find escape routes and of women trying to protect children from going missing in the frenzy were believed to have caused the stampede in the TVK rally in Karur on Saturday, hoardings and ropes on both sides of the Karur-Erode highway at the campaign venue in Veluswamypuram also played a deadly role. “There was no way for people to flee the stampede-like situation because both sides of the road were blocked with ropes and hoardings. Some were injured when the hoardings fell on them. I am sure, those hoardings and ropes were not there when we reached the venue by 4pm,” S Ramkumar, a survivor from Vadakku Palayam near Karur told TOI.
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Read also: What caused Karur stampede? Crowd panicked after Vijay sang song criticising V Senthilbalaji as ‘10-rupee minister’, say eyewitnessesSurvivors said thousands of people who gathered at the venue were not just locals, but were from Theni, Madurai, and Virudhunagar districts too. They came to see their star up close. They say everyone underestimated the expected footfall. The crowd that turned up was big enough for a conference that should have been conducted on an open ground. “It was chaos. We were all thrown apart. Nobody could even wake up to find where our loved ones were as ten of them were lying on each of us,” Abinaya S who lost her aunt Maheshwari said showing her photo. S Maliga, who lost her husband Shankar Ganesh, said, “I asked him not to attend the campaign, but he did. He has now left us all alone.”Men and women who preferred to sit on two-wheelers to watch the campaign were trapped too. As the crowd moved their way out, it was like a human flood, everything standing in their way was pushed aside. “We could not pull a middle-aged man out; his leg was struck in a two-wheeler, but a two-year-old boy was saved, I hope he made it alive,” Nirmal, a survivor said.Eyewitness recall that a section of youths stood atop roofs of a bakery and offered help for women with children to take their wards. However, as the roof fell, the situation turned worse as women ran helter-skelter to look for their children.
