It is the image of cluelessly happy toddlers and their grief-dazed mothers outside mortuaries that will remain a lasting and appalling contrast to the spectacle of India’s defence prowess put on in Chennai’s skies on October 6. Five men lost their lives after 15 lakh (1.5 million) people, attempting to leave the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) air show at Marina beach at the same time, found themselves trapped by chaos, traffic jams, high temperatures, suffocating humidity, and little help from authorities. The next morning witnessed friends and families breakdown outside mortuaries in the city’s three government hospitals, even as they struggled to process how a happy Sunday outing to the beach could turn so quickly into such devastating loss. 

Outside the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital’s (RGGGH) mortuary, 30-year-old Sivaranjani has to recount again and again how her husband Karthikeyan (34), who had left to find their two-wheeler, saying he’d “be back in 10 minutes,” was declared dead two hours later. Her frantic phone calls either went unanswered or didn’t go through, as mobile networks were jammed due to the crowd. 

“I had been calling him from around 1:20 pm to 3:15 pm when suddenly someone answered. They said, ‘your husband has vomited and fainted, we’re sending you the location pin, come here.’ I didn’t know how to get there so I asked a policeman to take me there. It was less than 10 minutes away. I found my husband lying on the ground. By the time we brought him here, he was declared dead,” Sivaranjani recalled. 

Karthikeyan had fainted on the Napier Bridge with no one to call for medical aid immediately. As Sivaranjini pointed out, it’s not far from the air show’s location. The bridge connects Kamaraj Salai, which runs parallel to the Marina beach, to Island Grounds, an arterial location in the city. Here, in one direction, spreads the Secretariat — the state’s seat of power. Two defence personnels’ quarters lie between this and the Indian Army’s Dakshin Bharat Area — their headquarters for south India. It is also a mere 2 km from the Multi-Super-Speciality government hospital in Omandurar and less than 4 km away from the RGGGH, where Sivaranjini and her family had to sign the consent forms for Karthikeyan’s post mortem. 

Sivaranjini said that before reaching her husband, she pleaded on the phone with the policeman who found him to administer first aid and call an ambulance immediately, but she was told that he had already tried unsuccessfully. Ambulances were not available. “He was just lying there by the road for two hours. If someone had given him first aid or if he could have been taken to the hospital on time, he would be alive now,” she added. 

Along the same stretch of Kamaraj Salai, another tragedy unfolded. Dinesh (41) who had attended the air show with his 8-year-old son, collapsed on the road. The child, his relatives tell TNM at the Royapettah government hospital’s mortuary, vaguely understood that somebody had attempted to resuscitate his father “because they were pressing his chest”. By the time Dinesh could be taken to a hospital, he too was declared dead. 

The child was stranded in a desperate crowd, with the only adult he knew there lying unconscious on the road. He was rescued and taken home by his father’s friends who were finally alerted by the police. 

It is impossible not to imagine the potential danger the little boy had been in among complete strangers, in an increasingly chaotic situation, while losing a parent. Dinesh’s childhood friend Zahoor, who spoke to TNM at the Royapettah mortuary the following day, shared these fears. He shared a bleaker detail — Dinesh himself had lost his father at the same age his son is now. 

Victims’ families refute Health Minister’s claims

TNM also visited the mortuary at the Multi-Super-Specialty hospital in Omandurar, where the bodies of two other victims — Srinivasan (48) and John Babu (58) were awaiting post mortem. John Babu’s son Narendran recalled not only the trauma of losing his father, but also the manner in which he found him: “He was just laid out on a platform along the beach.”

John’s nephew Sarath who had accompanied them to the show said, “We were delayed even while bringing [John] to the mainroad from the beach. He collapsed at 2:30 pm. We got an ambulance only at 3 pm. It took until 4 pm to reach the hospital through the crowds. Putting on an air show is fine, but they should have had a plan for ambulance movements.”

This contrasts starkly with what Tamil Nadu Health and Family Welfare Minister Ma Subramanian claimed during his October 7 press meet, when he said that the five men had died due to “heat and dehydration” and “not due to crowd mismanagement”. The Minister had also claimed, “Medical camps were provided, there were more than 100 doctors. There was the Air Force’s medical wing as well.” He further mentioned how close to the venue the Omandurar, Rajiv Gandhi, and Stanley hospitals are.

Outside the mortuary, Sarath asked in response, “What about the delay in the arrival of the ambulance? Wasn’t that due to crowd mismanagement? [The minister] should not talk like that. If every arrangement had been made, why did it take until 4 pm for the ambulance to reach the hospital when the patient was boarded at 3 pm. An ambulance can be delayed by 5 or 10 minutes. Why was it delayed by an hour?”

Ma Subramanian had further claimed, “Water and restroom facilities were adequate. This point was accepted by those who hosted (IAF) the event. How can anyone say that it wasn’t so?” The Minister added, “Fifteen lakh people were present and we managed the event without even small congestions, making history. The five people died due to the heat, we are openly accepting this. It’s wrong for [the media] to keep pinpointing it.”

This claim was refuted by the relatives of the victims’ at the mortuary, who said that they had to walk long distances to buy water bottles priced Rs 30-40 over the maximum retail price. These allegations have also been made by many others who took to social media to express their fury with the state government. 

Further, it is unclear what the Minister meant by “not even small congestions,” given the widely available video footage of the surging crowds at Marina Beach on October 6. 

IAF gets its Limca record, but at what cost? 

The IAF was not just celebrating their 92nd anniversary with the air show, but was also keen on setting a record. Prior to the event, the IAF announced that they have their eyes on an entry in the Limca Book of Records — an annual guide published in India documenting world records held by Indians — for the largest gathering at any air show. With this record in mind, the state and the IAF said that they were expecting a crowd as large as 12-15 lakh persons. 

Eventually, with 15 lakh people in attendance, the event did enter the Limca records, but its human cost demands the question, “Who will be held accountable for the five lives lost, if at all?”