{"id":21056,"date":"2025-09-29T03:05:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=21056"},"modified":"2025-09-29T03:05:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T03:05:03","slug":"indian-actor-politicians-aides-charged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=21056","title":{"rendered":"Indian actor-politician’s aides charged"},"content":{"rendered":"
Police charged three close aides of a popular actor and politician with culpable homicide and negligence on Sunday after a stampede at his rally in southern India killed at least 40 people, officials said.<\/p>\n

Some 27,000 people thronged a public road in Tamil Nadu state in the hope of seeing the politician, known by the single name of Vijay, on Saturday but panic broke out, triggering a deadly crush.<\/p>\n

Such crowd incidents happen frequently during mass gatherings in India and are often blamed on lax safety measures.<\/p>\n

Police filed a case against three senior members of Vijay’s party, whom they identified as Bussy Anand, G.R. Nirmal Kumar and V.P. Mathiyazhagan.<\/p>\n

“A case has been registered and the investigation will reveal all who are involved,” senior police officer S. Davidson Devasirvatham told reporters.<\/p>\n

All three have been charged with “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” and negligent conduct endangering human life.<\/p>\n

Witnesses cited hours of delays, insufficient police presence and people falling from a tree branch onto the audience as reasons contributing to the crush.<\/p>\n

Vijay was addressing the rally in Karur district when the crowd surged suddenly, forcing him to halt his speech.<\/p>\n

Videos on social media showed him tossing water bottles to supporters shortly before the panic broke out.<\/p>\n

“I am at a loss for words to express the pain my heart endures,” the 51-year-old star said in a statement on Sunday.<\/p>\n

“This is indeed an irreparable loss for us,” he said, adding that he would pay two million rupees ($22,000) to each of the victims’ families as compensation.<\/p>\n

Senior district official M. Thangavel said 40 people had been killed in the stampede, raising an earlier toll of 39.<\/p>\n

Nine children were among the dead.<\/p>\n

Huge crowds<\/p>\n

State police chief G. Venkataraman said crowds had been waiting for hours after the public was told that Vijay would arrive at the venue by noon.<\/p>\n

“The crowds started coming in from 11 am. He came at 7:40 pm,” Venkataraman told reporters. “The people lacked sufficient food and water under the hot sun.”<\/p>\n

He said 10,000 people were expected but about 27,000 had turned up.<\/p>\n

Vijay launched his party in 2024 and has drawn huge crowds at campaign events ahead of state elections due next year.<\/p>\n

Survivor B. Kanishka said he was “pushed down by the crowd all of a sudden”.<\/p>\n

“There was absolutely no space to move,” he told the Hindu newspaper. “I subsequently fainted.”<\/p>\n

Others said poor organisation and an hours-long wait left people restless before the gathering spiralled out of control.<\/p>\n

Another survivor, identified as Karthick, told the paper that the disaster could have been prevented “if people were not forced to wait for hours together”.<\/p>\n

“Poor planning and execution of the programme and lack of police personnel at the spot were also the reason,” he said.<\/p>\n

The Indian Express newspaper said panic spread after supporters who had climbed into a tree fell onto the crowd below.<\/p>\n

In January, 30 people were killed in a crush at a major religious fair in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and 121 were also killed during a Hindu prayer meeting in the same state last year.<\/p>\n

Eleven fans were crushed to death in the southern city of Bengaluru in June during celebrations for the local team’s first Indian Premier League cricket title.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police charged three close aides of a popular actor and politician with culpable homicide and negligence on Sunday after a stampede at his rally in southern India killed at least 40 people, officials said. Some 27,000 people thronged a public road in Tamil Nadu state in the hope of seeing the politician, known by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}