Chinnaswamy stampede: Siddaramaiah defends suspension of police commissioner, officers

Bengaluru: Defending the suspension of Bengaluru police commissioner B Dayananda and other police officials for the stampede outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium that killed 11 people, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday said, prima facie those who have not fulfilled their responsibility properly have been suspended.

While speaking to reporters, he accused BJP and JD(S) of doing politics on the issue.

Responding to a question on BJP and JD(S) demanding his and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar's resignation and accusing them of making police officials a "scapegoat," Siddaramaiah said, "They are speaking for the sake of politics. I don't want to do politics in this matter. Prima facie those responsible, who have not fulfilled their responsibility properly have been suspended."

The Chief Minister on Thursday had announced the decision to immediately suspend the Circle Police Inspector of the Cubbon Park Police station A K Girish and Assistant Commissioner of Police C Balakrishna, Deputy Commissioner of Police of central division Shekhar H Tekkannavar, Additional Commissioner of Police Vikash Kumar Vikash, who is in charge of the stadium, and Commissioner of Police Bengaluru city Dayananda.

The suspension order said, "It is found that there has been on the face of it substantial dereliction of duty by these officers." The stampede occurred on Wednesday evening in front of the stadium, where a large number of people thronged to participate in the RCB team's IPL victory celebrations. Eleven people have died and 56 were injured in the incident.

According to the suspension order, the CEO of RCB had intimated Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru City on June 3 about holding the victory parade and celebrations on June 4, however, the office of Police Commissioner failed to give written reply to the organisers, rejecting the permission on the grounds of lack of time to prepare for such a huge event.

It said, the RCB and the Cricket Association went ahead to tweet about the celebrations and inviting the fans to Chinnaswamy stadium without going through the usual practice of issuing tickets or passes, and despite the knowledge of these developments and expectation of huge turnout of cricket fans by the Police, steps were not taken to either have the event organised systematically at the stadium or give adequate information to the public to take necessary precautions for their safety or provide additional Police force for appropriate crowd management.

Further, the situation was not discussed with the higher ups for taking necessary guidance and advice in the matter. As a result, the situation went out of control and brought a lot of misery, loss of precious lives and embarrassment to the Government, it added.