BENGALURU: Royal Challengers Bengaluru said Thursday they stood “united” with fans as the Indian Premier League champions pledged one million Indian rupees ($11,654) to each family of the 11 fans who died in a crowd surge outside the team’s home stadium during celebrations following their maiden IPL title.
Hundreds of thousands had packed the streets in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru on Wednesday to welcome home their hero Virat Kohli and his RCB team-mates after they beat Punjab Kings in a thrilling final of the IPL’s 18th edition, the world’s richest T20 cricket league.
But the euphoria of the vast crowds ended in disaster when 11 fans died in a stampede near the city’s M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, where the players were parading the trophy.
Most of the dead were young fans aged between 14 and 29 who had gone out just to catch a glimpse of their heroes. Dozens of abandoned shoes and flip-flops littered the site in the aftermath.
The franchise will also launch a support fund for the injured. Indian media have widely reported the team earned $2.3 million in prize money alone for taking the title on Wednesday.
“The unfortunate incident in Bengaluru yesterday has caused a lot of anguish and pain to the RCB family,” the team said in a statement on Thursday. “Our fans will always remain at the heart of everything that we do. We remain united in grief.
“As a mark of respect and a gesture of solidarity, RCB has announced a financial support of 10 lakh (one million) Indian Rupees to each of the 11 families of the deceased. In addition, a fund called RCB Cares is also being created to support fans injured in this tragic incident.”
Kohli, who top-scored in the final, said he was “at a loss for words” after celebrations of a dream IPL crown turned to tragedy.
Police used mild force to disperse people outside the stadium, eyewitnesses said, but the crowd was “extremely difficult” to control.
Lakshminarayan, who lost his 14-year-old granddaughter in the crush, said his family carried the child in a motor rickshaw to hospital.
He said celebrations should have been delayed to prepare for the widely expected mass crowds.
“There was no need to conduct celebrations the very next day, they should have postponed it to a week and organised it a better way,” he said. “You should take all precautionary measures, they should have police protection and follow the queue system.”
One of the people injured described how a “huge crowd” had crushed her. “They stamped on me,” said the woman, who did not give her name, from a wheelchair. “I was not able to breathe. I fell unconscious.”
Street food vendor Manoj Kumar mourned the death of his 18-year-old son. “I wanted him to go to college,” Kumar told the Indian Express newspaper. “I brought him up with a lot of care. Now he is gone.”
A grieving mother outside a city mortuary said her 22-year-old engineering student son had also died. “He was crazy about RCB,” she was quoted as saying by the Indian Express. “He died in an RCB shirt. They danced when RCB won and now he is gone. Can RCB give him back to us?”
Authorities had already called off RCB’s proposed open-top bus victory parade through the streets after anticipating vast crowds. But organisers pressed ahead with the welcome ceremony and celebrations inside the stadium.
RCB’s social media account posted a video of cheering crowds lining the streets as the players waved back from their team bus on their way to the stadium. The team said they cut short the celebrations “immediately upon being made aware of the situation”.
Karnataka State Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who uses only one name, said the venue could not handle the size of the crowd, adding that the stadium’s capacity was 35,000 but 200,000 to 300,000 people had turned up for the celebrations.
“In the wake of the tragic stampede during RCB’s victory celebrations, the Karnataka Government will bear the full medical expenses of all those injured, whether admitted in government or private hospitals,” Siddaramaiah said in a statement on Thursday. “Orders have been issued to the Health Department and Suvarna Arogya Suraksha Trust (SAST) to ensure this without delay.”
Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2025
