Argentina football legend Lionel Messi was on a tour of India, organised by Satadru Dutta, the chief of this tour, who was denied bail on Sunday and sentenced to 14 days of police custody, a day after the Kolkata leg of this tour went out of control with injuries to hundreds of attendees.
It happened on Saturday afternoon when hundreds of fans came to the stadium hoping to see Messi, as well as his teammates at Inter Miami Luis Suarez and Rodrigo de Paul. The football stars could not however be seen by most of the spectators because of limited access and heavy security set ups which led to unrest. The circumstances got out of control and soon, vandalism and arson within the stadium premises occurred.
On Sunday, West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose came to Salt Lake Stadium to have the firsthand information of the situation. The Governor along with Chief Secretary Manoj Pant and senior police officials visited different parts of the venue. On Saturday evening, Bose had tried to visit the stadium but he claimed that the gates would not allow him to enter his venue claiming that lights were turned off and the gates were closed to ensure that Bose was not able to visit. He called the event a dark day to sports-loving people of Kolkata.
The Governor also ordered the state government to pursue the event organiser harshly and blamed the police over what he termed as gross failures in the handling of the crowd. The highly anticipated party, which was to be the high point of football, became a nightmare when Messi, who had made a short and restricted appearance in front of the crowd, his first appearance at the stadium since 2011, disappointed thousands of fans.
Several fans had covered much distance and allegedly paid as high as 20,000 INR to attend the event only to go back without seeing their star. After the mayhem, chief minister Mamata Banerjee established a high-level inquiry committee to investigate the case.
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