The Kolkata Durga Puja stampede at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin pandal in north Kolkata has killed 17 people and injured 25 others, according to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, prompting a government investigation and financial assistance from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The crowd surge took place on Saturday evening during the Durga Puja celebrations. Adhikari said 24 of the injured people were stable and one was in critical condition. The celebrations at the pandal have been suspended, while puja committee members and security agencies have been detained, according to the chief minister’s statement cited by The Telegraph India.
Modi described the incident as “extremely distressing” in a post on X and announced ex gratia assistance of Rs 2 lakh for the next of kin of each deceased person and Rs 50,000 for every injured person. He said the local administration was providing all possible assistance to those affected and expressed condolences to the families of the victims.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah also postponed his programmes in Bengal scheduled for Sunday and said he would visit the hospital to meet the injured. Shah said he had spoken with Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari after receiving news of the casualties at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal.
The immediate sequence of events remained contested in the account available on Saturday night. Adhikari said preliminary information suggested that a crowd surge followed an announcement by a member of the puja committee. Families of two victims, however, blamed private security guards and said the commotion began while bamboo barricades were being erected.
The competing accounts point to the operational challenges of managing large crowds at temporary festival venues in dense urban neighbourhoods. Crowd movement can be affected by announcements, barricades, entry and exit arrangements, security deployment and the speed with which ambulances or other emergency vehicles can reach a site. The source report did not provide details of the pandal’s approved capacity, the number of visitors present or the precise layout of the barricades.
The Trinamool Congress alleged that Kolkata Police personnel and ambulances were not present at the site immediately after the incident. The party claimed that local residents and pandal visitors rescued injured people and transported them to hospital in Ola and Uber vehicles. These allegations were not independently established in the supplied report. The party also criticised the BJP-led administration’s handling of the incident.
Former Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee expressed shock and wished the injured a speedy recovery. Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee separately criticised the Kolkata Police, West Bengal Police and Suvendu Adhikari in a post on X.
The state government has ordered what Adhikari described as a transparent investigation. The next official steps are expected to include determining how the crowd surge began, examining the role of the puja committee and private security agencies, and establishing whether crowd-control and emergency-response arrangements were adequate at the venue.
