Communication key to crowd control: Experts

This year, stampedes at a major railway station in Delhi, at the Maha Kumbh in Uttar Pradesh, and during a cricket match victory celebration in Karnataka have led to at least 72 deaths and a few hundred injuries so far—a grim statistic which exposes the glaring gaps in crowd regulation rules, official apathy and tokenistic governance.

- Soumya Chatterjee

NEW DELHI:

Action taken following these tragic, largely preventable deaths does little to avert such incidents in the future—after the June 4 stampede in Bengaluru, the state leadership, replicating the action of its counterparts in other parts of the country, suspending the city's top cop and other police staff, and ordered a magisterial inquiry. Later, the Karnataka high court also took suo motu notice.

In light of these developments, HT spoke with veteran police officers, planners, urban designers, and academics to dissect the anatomy of stampedes and how to prevent them.

Gaps in policing Prakash Singh, a retired IPS officer who was the state police chief of Assam and Uttar Pradesh and the director-general of the Border Security Force, said the Bengaluru tragedy appears to be a case of overriding political desire overruling reservations from the police. Multiple reports, including by HT, suggest that the police had initially dismissed the idea of a parade due to paucity of time. But as some players from the overseas were scheduled to return home, there was a rush to hold the celebrations on June 4 itself, according to people aware of the matter.

"But this should have never been made part of the consideration. No event can be organised without the clearance from the police," Singh said.