CHENNAI: Facing repeated questions from the opposition and social media scrutiny over alleged lapses in the Karur stampede, the state government on Tuesday deployed a team of officials to blunt the charges regarding site approval, police deployment, and power outage at the TVK’s Saturday event addressed by Vijay.
At a media briefing at the secretariat, revenue secretary P Amudha, home secretary Dheeraj Kumar, health secretary P Senthil Kumar and Head of Police Force (HoPF in-charge) G Venkataraman and ADGP (L&O) Davidson Devasirvatham shared videos, with timestamps, to support their claims.
TVK’s preferred venue rejected due to proximity to petrol bunk: Official
The cadres were seen climbing on the roof of shops and houses in Namakkal and Karur. The officials rejected allegations of insufficient security deployment, wrong choice of venue for the rally, deliberate disruption by ambulances, and showed cadres driving very close to Vijay’s campaign vehicle, several TVK supporters falling into the generator room in Karur, and other scenes of mayhem at the event.
Though TVK projected a crowd of 10,000 in their letter seeking permission, police deployed 500 cops at a ratio of 1 cop for 20 people, which was more than double the standard deployment of 1 cop for 50 people for “high risk” crowds, Davidson said. This was because the cops estimated a crowd of 20,000 to turn up based on the leader’s previous rallies, he added. He also said the crowd could have swelled to 25,000 to 30,000 when Vijay was delivering his speech.
The officials said TVK’s preferred venue, Karur Roundtana, was rejected due to its proximity to a petrol bunk and a sewage canal. Also, it was no longer a designated place for such events as it impacted businesses as per the set of locations finalised in March 2025 by the District Collector in consultation with political parties. Amudha also clarified that the power supply was not suspended during the rally.
To a question if there was an evacuation plan, the ADGP said that the rally was on a road open on both sides and that people could have left if they so desired, but they wanted to stay.
The presentation, showing violation of norms by TVK cadres, tried to emphasize that Vijay’s much-delayed arrival to Namakkal and then Karur was an important reason for the stampede. The crowds had swelled and were exhausted and dehydrated.
Using timestamps, the officials said the first emergency call to 108 for ambulance came as early as 7.14pm when Vijay continued to speak from his vehicle. Apart from six 108 ambulances, TVK had deployed seven ambulances and 33 others came from nearby districts and private hospitals to handle the rescue operations till 9.45pm, the officials said.
The officers stressed that people were waiting for a long time to see their leader and hence the crowd surged with time. To a question on whether the rally could have been called off considering these violations, Devasirvatham said that it was not possible as the consequences of stopping the event could have been unexpected.
Answering the specific charge of postmortems of the dead done after sunset, Senthil Kumar said it was done to reduce anxiety of the bereaved families. The Karur government hospital had only three forensic medical experts and 16 others from nearby medical colleges were brought in for assistance, he added.
Regarding allegations of some people claiming that knives were used by some to tear the shirts of people and stones were pelted, the officials said the truth about such claims would be unearthed during the investigation of the incident. Though the press conference was announced earlier, the briefing started at 5 pm, about 90 minutes after Vijay posted a video insinuating a conspiracy in the stampede.