Karur stampede toll climbs to 41 as TNEB engineer denies power cut; Vijay alleges 'political conspiracy'

The death toll from the stampede at Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam chief Vijay's campaign rally in Karur has climbed to 41, after 65-year-old Suguna — a Karur district resident who had been on ventilator support in intensive care — succumbed to her injuries.

The dead include 18 women, 13 men, five young girls and five young boys. Thirty-four of the victims were from Karur district; two each came from Erode, Tiruppur and Dindigul, and one from Salem. The massive crowd at Vijay's Saturday-evening rally reportedly turned chaotic and uncontrollable, triggering panic; many in the crowd fainted and were rushed to nearby hospitals, and overcrowding at the venue is believed to have caused the tragedy.

Vijay announced financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh to the families of the dead and Rs 2 lakh to the injured, writing in an emotional post on X that he was "at a loss for words" and that the faces of the dead kept flashing through his mind. Prime Minister Narendra Modi separately announced Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund for the next of kin of the deceased and Rs 50,000 for the injured.

But even as the toll rose, the questions sharpened. The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board's chief engineer in Karur told the Times of India there had been no disruption in power supply while Vijay was speaking — and revealed that the TVK's west secretary had written to TNEB on September 26 asking for a power cut during Vijay's speech, a request rejected the same day. "It is clear from all the images that the lights were on," the engineer said, adding that the generators and focus lights set up by the organisers had switched off because of the crowd.

Vijay, for his part, alleged a "political conspiracy" behind the tragedy and moved the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court, demanding a CBI probe or an independent investigation. A one-member commission headed by retired High Court judge Aruna Jagadeesan, appointed by the state government, is also inquiring into the stampede; after visiting the Government Medical College Hospital in Karur, she said the injured were receiving good treatment.

Forty-one people went to hear their chief minister speak and never came home — ten of them children. The stampede is the deadliest single disaster of the TVK's young government, and it happened at the ruling party's own event, under its own crowd management. Whether the High Court or the commission pins down the failures, the pattern is already visible: a rally built for spectacle, a venue that could not hold its crowd, and now a search for conspiracies instead of accountability. The families counting their dead deserve the second, not the first.