It was supposed to be a celebration. But Bengaluru will forever remember that 11 people didn’t come home that day.
They had gathered outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium to celebrate Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s first-ever IPL title win. They had waited 17 years for this day. It was meant to be a day of celebration, where strangers laughed together, where parents hoisted their children a little higher to help them see something worth remembering.
Sporting triumphs offer a collective meaning that makes even personal milestones feel small in comparison. But this shared joy quickly turned into despair — into a tragedy — on that fateful day.
“While the stadium’s seating capacity is around 32,000, the number of fans who gathered crossed 2.5 lakh, according to police estimates. There were only 1,318 police personnel at the stadium, the government’s affidavit submitted to the High Court later reveals. The affidavit also shows that the usual deployment for a match at the stadium is 789,” The Hindu reported on June 14.
The city police had stated that the location and time were not suitable for a parade. They had raised concerns and asked for more time to prepare. But the machinery of celebration — the optics, the commerce, the branding — moved faster than common sense.
India has a long, unhealed memory of moments like this. The 1980 Kolkata derby at Eden Gardens claimed the lives of 16 fans. The stampede at the Kumbh Mela earlier this year — 30 dead — or Hathras last year, where 116 lost their lives. These are different events in different places. But the reasons always feel the same: too many people, not enough planning, and too little accountability.
Even in Mumbai last year, during the T20 World Cup celebrations, it almost tipped over. The sea of people at the Wankhede Stadium had that same terrifying potential.
Crowds never behave like people. They behave like water. Pour too many into one place, and they rise, they surge, they fill every available gap, and they break through whatever holds them. Unless there’s somewhere safe to go — a funnel, a channel, a system — the crowd turns on itself, drowning in its power and energy.
And the world has learned this the hard way.
It took 96 deaths at Hillsborough in 1989 for England to course-correct. At Sheffield’s Hillsborough Stadium, during an FA Cup semifinal, thousands of Liverpool fans were funnelled into already-full pens. Poor signage, inadequate policing, and locked gates resulted in a horrific crush. After a public inquiry, the Taylor Report, published in January 1990, recommended sweeping changes.
It was not the crowd’s fault; it was the system’s.
Standing terraces were replaced by all-seaters in English stadiums. Ticketing became digitised. Policing and stewarding systems were overhauled. Emergency access was legislated. Crowd science became a real discipline.
Fans were no longer treated as a mob but as people with rights and vulnerabilities — with home and family to return to.
In India, we are still waiting for that moment.