BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday directed the city police not to arrest the representatives of the Royal Challengers Sports Private Limited (RCSPL) and its event management firm, DNA Entertainment Networks Private Limited over the three FIRs registered in connection with the stampede outisde the M Chinnaswamy Stadium that claimed 11 lives and injured many on June 4. The court also directed them to cooperate with the investigation.
They have moved the High Court along with RCB’s Marketing and the Revenue Head Nikhil Sosale questioning the FIRs registered on June 5. Justice S R Krishna Kumar passed the interim order after hearing three petitions filed by Sosale.
Contending that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s social media post, “Join the celebrations of this historic victory” attracted a huge crowd of people in front of Vidhana Soudha and the same crowd joined the fans at Chinnaswamy Stadium, the petitioners stated that the State Government can’t find fault with them when it has suspended senior police officers on the ground of dereliction of duty over the incident.
NOTICE TO KSCA, RCB AND DNA
The division bench of acting Chief Justice V Kameswar Rao and Justice C M Joshi passed the order to implead the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA), RCB and DNA as respondents to the suo motu public interest petition already registered on the stampede and issued notice to them.
Also indicating that it would appoint an amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter, the court posed the question to Advocate General (AG) K Shashikiran Shetty as to why the documents were also submitted in a sealed cover. Some of the counsels appearing for the impleading applications and also a counsel on behalf of a kin of the deceased objected to the response submitted by the state government for the nine questions posed on the incident.
They have also submitted that there should be transparency and accountability in such issues. The court also said that the state’s response should be made public.