Several videos taken at the site of actor-politician Vijay’s rally in Tamil Nadu’s Karur showed the tragic moment when some people began to fall in the crowd before the situation developed into a stampede.
At least 38 people, including 10 children and 17 women, were killed and 46 were injured in the stampede while Vijay, the chief of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), was addressing them from a campaign bus.
In some of the videos, people were seen screaming for help as they climbed on top of one another to breathe. Some children sat on the shoulders of adults, likely their parents, as they watched Vijay’s bus approach from a distance – minutes away from the tragedy.
As the crowd swelled and people started getting suffocated because of the heat and overcrowding, Vijay stopped his speech and started throwing bottles of water at the crowd to help, videos showed.
Ambulances are seen stuck in a sea of people; the drivers struggled to move forward and pick up the injured.
After the incident, Vijay went to the airport in Trichy and took a flight to Chennai. He declined to give a comment to the media and hid his face from cameras at the airport. He spoke on the incident for the first time only after he landed in the state capital.
“My heart is shattered, writhing in pain,” he said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has sought a report from the Tamil Nadu government on the incident. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, who is coming to Karur tonight, in a post on X expressed shock over the tragedy, and ordered an investigation into the stampede by a one-member panel headed by retired high court judge Justice Aruna Jagadeesan.