‘Saw him on TV, knew he was dead’: Families stare at losses after Karur stampede

HAri Vishnu’s fellowship was disconsolate with brokenheartedness on sun. His padre struggled to fight back tears and his mother, who has a speech and hearing disability, laid motionless and emotionless on the floor.Vishnu, all of 18 months old, was the youngest of the 40 people who were killed in a stampede during actor-politician Vijay’s political rally in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district on Saturday. His aunt had taken him to the actor’s rally where a massive crowd had gathered on the main road at Velusamy Nagar in Karur. Vishnu’s aunt lives in Velusamy Nagar.“All of our family members who went to the rally are in the government hospital, my grandson died right here,” Vishnu’s grandmother Jayashri said. “My son (Vimal) saw my grandson on television and only then knew that he had died there.”On Sunday, hundreds of footwears and party flags strewn across the ground narrated the horror that had unfolded a day ago. Of the 40 killed, 17 were women and nine were children. The deceased included a couple who were set to get married in October; a mother to a two-year-old girl; sole breadwinners of families; and children like Vishnu.Actor Vijay was 7 hours late by the time he had reached the rally’s venue at 7.30 pm on Saturday from his previous rally in Namakkal district. A large crowd had swelled by over 25,000 by the time he arrived at the site of the rally, and what made the matter worse was inadequate organisation by his party Tamizhaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK), and lack of police personnel for crown management, officials said, citing as reasons that led to the stampede. Several victims were daily wage labourers and people from low-income groups, they added.Ambulances on Sunday lined up at the mortuary to take the bodies of the deceased to various locations across Karur and its neighbouring districts from where the victims had come to catch a glimpse of the superstar actor.At the Karur government hospital, 52 people are being treated, including two in the ICU. “Only two patients are in critical condition in the ventilator, the others are alright,” said Suganthy Rajakumari, director of medical education in Karur. Politicians from the ruling DMK and opposition AIADMK and BJP met the families of the victims.“Yesterday was the first time my wife (Brinda) left our two-year-old daughter alone with me to go to the rally with her friends. She was a big fan,” said her father Sushant. “Now, my daughter and I are alone for the rest of our lives.”A couple, Gokula Sri and Akash, were set to be married in October. “We cautioned them not to go for the rally because we have seen how crowded Vijay’s rallies can get,” 24-year-old Gokula’s mother said. “They didn’t listen. So, I kept calling them every hour to check and they spoke to me. When I called at 7.30 pm, there was no response.”People began gathering from around 11am at the venue but the chaos began at around 7.10pm –– when Vijay arrived in his campaign bus at the venue. The stampede happened after Vijay began his speech.“In that thick crowd, people started trying to get to the spot where Vijay’s bus would stop,” a worker in a mobile shop near the venue, Karthikeyan, said. “So, they began pushing each other. And an ambulance was in between the crowd. Then some people started moving in another direction to make way for the ambulance,” he recalled, adding that a tree branch on which about 15 people were sitting fell on the crowd.Videos showed Vijay purportedly pausing his speech when he saw people fainting and throwing bottles of water from his bus to the crowd to help and resumed speaking. “He might have also felt something was wrong because there were power fluctuations,” said another eyewitness.