By Revathi R
CHENNAI:The generally crowded MGR Nagar bus stand is bustling on Modayalso but the mood is tense. The crowd comprises of uniformed personnel Even as you enter the street where 42 people died in a stamped early Sunday morning at the MGR Nagar Arignar Anna Corporation School trying to collect flood relief dole, the huge police presence is what strikes you the most.
Just a 100 feet away stands a maruti omni ambulance. A resident says, “42 people bled to death and lay here unattended for more than two hours. Now we have ambulances in every street”.
A black flag demonstration by the resident’s association of MGR Nagar is ongoing and two different groups of people are trying to put forward conflicting theories about the stampede. While one group places the blame for the stampede on the police,the other vehemently defends the police and says the stampede was the fault of the public.
What went wrong on the bloody Sunday?
“On Saturday the authorities issued flood relief at the corporation school. There was a huge crowd on that day. The police was there to control the crowd. After some time they announced that rest of the tokens would be issued on Sunday, so we all came early to queue” says Chitra. “ First of all they were issuing tokens for almost 8000 people in one place in two days. It is not at all possible in this narrow street”, adds anagitated Shanthi whose son was injured in the melee.
One more reason for the huge number of peoplethronging the venue so early was (around 3-4 a.m.)because it seems that the police were selling the tokens then itself.
“ From 50 rupees to 500 rupees the relief tokens were being sold. We had apprehensions that if we didn’t go in the beginning we wouldn’t get any. So we came in the night itself and waited,” says a witness.
The crowd which started assembling after midnight, rose up to a whopping 3500 by 3 in the morning. According to many eyewitnesses, a police jeep with three policemen came to the spot at 3.30am. “Until then, people belonging to the three different ration shops 26, 27 and 28 were standing in different lines. We don’t know who said that but as soon as the jeep came the word spread saying that all three will have to be in the same queue. And then the run started.”
As the run started there were two major reasons which resulted in the many casualties: 1) the entrance of the corporation school sloped downwards abruptly and three plastic ropes were tied across at knee level by the administration. Chinnathai, whose mother died in the stampede says, “It was yellow plastic rope and it was the main reason why we fell. I don’t know why they tied it. There’s no way we could anticipate ropes to be tied at knee level and we slipped.”
Everything seems to have gone wrong for the hapless people after that. Many unidentified people, presumably in an attempt to disperse the crowd threw sand on the crowd, which resulted in even more people falling down unable to see. The police also tried to lathi charge in an attempt to disperse the crowd which added to the pandemonium with no one really noticing the people who had already fallen near the gate. “They kept running and I could see my father down there and people were running on his face and body and there was no way I could reach to him. I don’t know how I’ll forget that moment,” Says Kannan whose father Chellappan’s dead body was being prepared for the funeral.
“Why did they let 4500 people assemble at one place is the first question. We volunteered in Maduvankarai to distribute flood relief and did it peacefully. Why did the police have tokens? And why were they allowed to sell them for money? Why was relief given to the ruling party people first?” asks an agitated Sakunthala of the Bharathi Magalir Manram, a women’s organization providing assistance to flood affected people.
On the grief ridden streets of MGR Nagar, anybody criticizing the police and their handling of the relief effort, is met with an immediate retaliation from members of the ruling AIADMK, “ All these people come and crowd up here in the night what can the police do? In fact I saw a policeman falling at the feet of the crowd asking them to disperse. These people will not listen”, says Ramalakshmi. When asked whether she was present during the stampede, she answers “No”, but insists that it is true that the policeman begged the crowd to disperse.
“It’s been three weeks since the first flood hit Chennai. Why did they wait for so long? Why did they issue tokens for six shops together in the same place in two days? And why wasn’t there any security arrangement when they already knew that six people died just a month back in a similar stampede?”, asks Ravichandran of MGR Nagar.
From the administration side, the response is quite characteristic; the Chennai collector was transferred while the police force chose to aggravate the people further by deploying an excessively large force including the Special Action commandos in every nook and corner of MGR Nagar.
Every wall in sight is decorated with different posters and banners, propaganda of the different political parties hoping to capitalize on the grief and anger of the people. The 42 people who died trying to get flood relief are fast becoming a statistic which will undoubtedly have an impact on the upcoming game of numbers; the state elections due in April next year.(indiadisasters,19 December, 2005)
