"Such Tragedies Are Totally Avoidable": Kiran Bedi To NDTV On Karur Stampede

Former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Kiran Bedi on Wednesday said the deadly stampede at actor-politician Vijay's rally in Tamil Nadu's Karur was "totally avoidable".

41 people were killed and over 60 were injured in Saturday's stampede in Karur, where Vijay was campaigning for his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) party ahead of state elections early next year.

A badge with a picture of Vijay lies amid footwear and other belongings left by attendees at the site of a stampede incident
Photo Credit: Reuters

"Such tragedies are totally avoidable and preventable, provided there is prior planning, due communication and due diligence," Bedi told NDTV.

"When prior planning, proper communication and due diligence and working together as an administration and organisers are missing, such events happen," Bedi, the former governor of neighbouring Puducherry, said.

She also said it was the "failure" of the police intelligence and organisers that they failed to estimate the number of people who would attend the Karur rally.

The Tamil Nadu Police had said the organisers put the expected number at 10,000, but about 27,000 people turned up. They said that about 500 personnel were deployed for the rally.

"It is a mutual failure and both (the police and organisers) are responsible. The police could have cancelled it (the rally) and could have said that they can not put people's lives at risk. They could have told the organisers that the crowd is beyond and we don't have a matching police arrangement. The organisers could have held the rally in an audio or video format," she said.

Bedi, who was the first woman to have joined the officer ranks of the IPS, said it was the duty of the police to assess the risk of the stampede.

She also said the police do not take such decisions in "isolation". 

"It's an administrative decision. Now, this would have been a highly political decision because it would want to have had political implications. Therefore, it's an administrative decision that should have been huddled together and then taken a call," Bedi said.

"In this case, there's not only the police department involved, there's also the administration involved. There's a magistracy involved. There's a secretary of the Home involved. There's a politician involved. There are a lot of people involved. The police are the face of the administration. So I think both should have taken a conscious decision, protecting human safety," she added.

The police have said that there was a crowd surge after the TVK party announced on its official X (formerly Twitter) handle that 51-year-old Vijay would arrive at the meeting venue by 12 pm. The permission for the rally, however, was sought between 3 pm-10 pm, they said.

"The permission was sought between 3 pm-10 pm. The TVK Twitter account said he would come at 12, and the crowd started coming in from 11 AM. He came at 7.40 PM. The people lacked sufficient food and water under the hot sun," he said, adding it was "too early to say what exactly triggered the stampede," Tamil Nadu's Director General of Police G Venkataraman told reporters hours after the incident.

Vijay, who has drawn massive crowds to his public meetings since launching TVK in 2024, has now "temporarily postponed" his statewide tour.