Four days for free tickets, years for justice

The last time I covered RCB on assignment before the current IPL season was on that dreadful day of June 4, 2025, when 11 fans who had come to celebrate their team never made it home. What should have been a night of joy outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium ended in a stampede. Eleven lives were lost, many were injured, and a city that loves its cricket was left staring at its own mess. That is not a small lapse. That is a scar.

What went wrong was plain enough then, and it is still plain now. The celebrations were announced without proper planning; crowd control was weak; and even a senior police officer had warned the state government that the crowd could be too large to handle. Later, the state government itself blamed RCB for unilaterally announcing the victory celebrations after the IPL finals. This was not some surprise blow from nowhere. The signs were there, and the warning signs were there too. 

In the days after the tragedy, the grief had several human faces. One father said that if he had known his son was going to the stadium, he would have stopped him. The boy, Shivalinga, had just passed class 10 and was seen as the future of the family. Another father, after the compensation was handed over, said the pain remains constant and the tragedy cannot be forgotten. These are not lines for a file or a report. These were the words from homes that were broken in that one evening.

There was action after the outrage, but it was the kind that came after the horse had bolted. Police filed FIRs against RCB, the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) and the event company DNA. Three IPS officers and two policemen were suspended and later reinstated. Two officials from RCB and DNA were arrested soon after the first FIR, although they later secured bail. Yet the biggest question remains hanging. The chargesheet is still pending, and one year later, the case has still not reached the finish line.

Cut to 2026. There is a new season, a fresh start, and the first thing people now see is 11 empty seats and a memorial plaque for the dead. The tribute is thoughtful, though there was a minor grammatical error on the granite plaque. The minute of silence was solemn; this time, the arrangements for the inaugural match, to be fair, were much smoother. Crowd movement looked better; entry and exit were better managed. That part deserves credit. But better arrangements are not the same as accountability. 

What I saw from inside the stadium still sits uneasy. A key franchisee official who was arrested in connection with the stampede was in the Diamond Box, right above the memorial seats. The chief minister’s close aide, who was sacked for allegedly insisting on large-scale celebration of RCB’s IPL victory, was in the AC lounge just behind the memorial seats. It is hard to look at that and call it closure. The empty seats in front were meant to honour the dead, but the living in power were still sitting comfortably behind them. That is the image that stays with you long after the match is over.

The stampede also changed the cricket boardroom. Veteran cricketer Venkatesh Prasad won the KSCA presidency
in December, with new leadership taking charge after the tragedy. The previous KSCA dispensation was already under pressure, and the post-stampede fallout helped sweep the old order aside. So yes, the incident changed people at the top. What it did not change enough was the question of responsibility.

And then there is the politics of convenience. When the tragedy happened last June, MLAs stood in the Assembly and blamed each other. This March, in the Assembly, the same leaders came together for something else: free IPL passes. On March 26, MLAs demanded more tickets. On March 27, two tickets per MLA were announced for the opening match. By March 30, it became three tickets per MLA for IPL matches. The system moved from one ticket to three tickets in four days. From FIR to conviction, it has not moved in one year. The system worked very efficiently for free tickets but not for fixing responsibility.

RCB is not a small club. It is one of the IPL’s biggest names and was recently valued at about $1.78 billion in a sale that underlined its huge commercial pull. That only makes the silence on accountability look worse. The show should go on, no doubt. Cricket must go on. RCB must go on and maybe win more cups. But where is the accountability that the 11 families deserved?

Memorial seats and silent prayers are not justice. Accountability in a court of law is justice. Do not ask families to swallow a life sentence of grief while the case drags on and the guilty remain unnamed.