The dental college held a condolence meeting for Shravan and closed the college for the day to mourn the loss.

Lack of proper management

Sridhar, in a conversation with The Federal, said his family is not interested in any compensation. “How can Rs 10 lakh bring back my brother’s life? My parents are suffering, who can console them?” he asked. Unwilling to blame the players or the RCB management, he agreed that lack of proper management led to the stampede and the chaos.

“They are blaming the players on social media but I would say that we need to be alert and not participate in such events and ensure it does not happen again,” he said.

‘My bad luck’

Karunakar Shetty, the father of 19-year-old Chinmayi Shetty, is inconsolable with grief. “What is the point of trying to fix the blame on who is responsible? We all know who is responsible, it is the people who organised the event,” Shetty told The Federal.

“It is not an international match, and just a club match so what is the need for such a frenzy? The Chennai Super Kings or Mumbai Indians have also won before, we did not see this kind of a reaction. It is my bad luck that I had to lose my daughter,” he said.

Chinmayi Shetty was not particularly a cricket fan. She was more passionate about Yakshagana and looked forward to her weekly class at the Mangalore association in Kanakapura.

A first-year computer science student at the Jyoti Institute of Technology at Kanakapura, she was planning to do an MTech. On that fateful day on June 4, her friends pestered her to join them for the victory celebrations at Chinnaswamy stadium and Chinmayee tagged along. However, she got swept away by the “ocean of humanity” (as one Karnataka Sports Cricket Association staff described the crowds entering the stadium) and ended up critically injured and had to be rushed to the hospital. –

On the way, she was conscious enough to give her friend her father’s phone number.

Karunakar Shetty got the news that his daughter was being rushed to the hospital but when he arrived at the spot, he was told she was already dead when she was brought in.

Bosch employee too succumbs

Sahana (24), an employee at Bosch too, lost her life. A cricket fan and a Virat Kohli fan, she had eagerly found a spot near the gates, along with her friends, to get into the stadium. But, the crowd that came behind her crushed her to death. Her cousin-brother said that her parents are completely devastated.

“We blame the government for not taking any proper action at the right time. They should have waited for a few days for emotions to settle down and organised it in a proper way. The stadium can only take 30,000 people but lakhs of people had descended at the spot,” he said bitterly.

The injured tell their tales

Shyamlee was one of the fortunate ones, who was discharged after spending a day in a ward at the Bowring hospital. She is still in a state of shock but was able to recount what happened to her briefly.

“I went for the celebrations but I was standing along with my fiancee and my sister right at the back near gate 6 of the stadium but somehow, we got carried in by a crowd from the back. They pushed so hard I fell and I had people stomping over me and I lost consciousness. It was my fiancee who carried me out and hailed a police van which took us to the hospital,” she told The Federal. Now, she is back home hoping to forget the bad experience.

Haneef (22), who had a head injury, which required stitches, is recuperating at Bowring Hospital. However, Haneef had a different story to tell. He said that the police struck him on the head twice as he was trying to make his way into the stadium. “They hit me on the head twice as I was trying to enter the stadium and I lost consciousness. My family doesn’t know I am here,” he said.

Some victims had lost their limbs and suffered eye injuries at this celebratory event, which turned into a nightmare for some. There is a pall of gloom around Chinnaswamy stadium today but there is no evidence of the huge tragedy that has befallen 11 families except for a mountain of chappals, a Maruti car with a shattered windshield and a torn Vijay Mallya poster strewn on the ground.