Two teenagers from New Town died after being caught in a crowd crush at a puja pandal in north Kolkata’s Chorbagan area on Saturday, with their bodies returning to their Gouranganagar homes on Sunday, according to a report by Sangbad Pratidin.
The victims were identified as 17-year-old Barnali Haldar and 18-year-old Tania Biswas, residents of the Gauranganagar Naya Palli area. The two girls were close friends and had gone out with five other friends to visit puja pandals across Kolkata during the festival.
According to the report, the group was at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin puja pandal when a large gathering of visitors led to intense crowding and confusion. Barnali and Tania were seriously injured after being caught in the crush. They were taken to hospital in critical condition, but doctors declared them dead.
The bodies reached the families’ homes in Gouranganagar on Sunday afternoon. Relatives and neighbours gathered as the victims were brought back, and preparations for their last rites began soon afterwards. The deaths left the locality in mourning, with residents describing the two girls as friends who had grown up together.
The incident has brought the risks of crowd movement at large festival venues into sharp focus. Puja pandals draw visitors from across a city, often concentrating large numbers of people in narrow approaches and enclosed viewing areas. In such settings, the movement of a crowd can rapidly become difficult to control when visitors slow down, stop or attempt to move in opposing directions.
The source report did not provide details of the pandal’s permitted visitor capacity, the number of personnel deployed for crowd control, the availability of entry and exit routes, or whether any official inquiry had been ordered. It also did not state whether the deaths were followed by any police or civic authority announcement.
Rajarhat New Town MLA Pijush Kanoria visited the bereaved families after the bodies arrived and expressed his condolences. Speaking to the media, he recalled that one of the girls had recently wanted to give him a sapling. He said the loss was impossible to accept and that a mother’s grief could not be erased, while assuring the family of continued support.
The deaths occurred during one of Kolkata’s busiest periods for public gatherings, when residents travel between neighbourhoods to visit multiple pandals. The immediate account available from the source establishes the deaths, the identities of the victims and the reported crowd-crush circumstances, but does not yet establish the operational failures, if any, that led to the incident. Further information from the police, organisers or civic authorities would be needed to clarify those questions.
