- Joseph Vijay returned to Karur, criticising police and DMK over the 2025 stampede tragedy
- He accuses police of misleading him and allowing the rally to proceed despite risks
- Vijay blames DMK for orchestrating the stampede and politicising the tragedy
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay came out swinging on his return to Karur - the scene of the September 2025 stampede that killed 41 people at his pre-election rally - with sharp criticism of the police and the opposition DMK.
In his first visit to the district since the tragedy, he accused the police of misleading him. He said he had "trusted" the police in proceeding with the rally and described the stampede as "the most painful moment in my life, one that continues to haunt me".
"No matter how much success one enjoys... there are such incidents in life. When I entered Karur they (the police) could have stopped me, no? They could have alerted us, told us the crowd was becoming unmanageable..." he told the gathering.
"They had every right to cancel the meeting. But they did not, they guided me in... Then I trusted the police fully and I even thanked them at the meeting. I didn't know about the drama. But who is really responsible for this... who orchestrated this?" he asked, pivoting from criticism of the police to attacks on the Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam, in power at the time.
Lamenting the loss of "innocent, cherubic children", he also hit back at criticism over his silence in the aftermath. Vijay and his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam came under attack, particularly from the DMK, for not speaking publicly for an extended period.
"You mocked me... when I was feeling crushed and in pain at home, you said I was 'hiding'," Vijay, dressed in black, said.
He also suggested that the DMK and the police had "conspired" to trigger the stampede and gain political advantage ahead of the April 2026 Assembly election. "Did the police deploy enough people? They blamed me shamelessly and MK Stalin did politics," he said, reiterating the TVK's claim that the tragedy was manufactured to derail his eventually successful campaign.
Vijay, whose movie star status commands a massive fan following across Tamil Nadu, also urged voters to hand the DMK multiple electoral defeats, and said the party had indulged in widespread corruption that he had already begun dismantling.
Apart from marking his first visit to Karur since the stampede, the chief minister's trip has also been overshadowed by legal challenges to the Tamil Nadu government's decision to offer government jobs to the families of the 41 victims.
The DMK has argued that the move amounts to influencing witnesses in the ongoing probe.
The opposition party approached the Supreme Court last week, but its plea was rejected. "What exactly are you trying to say? You want the court to dictate what a chief minister should do?" the court asked. "Chief Minister Vijay is not an accused."
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The DMK withdrew its plea but approached the court-appointed supervisory committee and the Central Bureau of Investigation, the agency probing the stampede, seeking safeguards to preserve witness statements before Friday's visit.
But earlier, about an hour before Vijay's arrival, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court refused to interfere with what it said was a "policy decision" - i.e., to provide jobs to the victims' families - and allowed appointment letters to be issued.
RECAP | Hour Before Vijay's Karur Visit, Madras High Court's Big Decision On Jobs Row
However, the court directed that the appointments would remain temporary and subject to its final verdict in the case.
