New Delhi: ‘Messi did not like being hugged': What arrested organiser Satadru Dutta told SIT about Kolkata chaos
The main organiser of Lionel Messi’s GOAT India tour in Kolkata on December 13, Satadru Dutta, faced prolonged questioning by the officers of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the chaos which unfolded at the event.
During the inquiry, Dutta told SIT officers that the football icon was “unhappy with being touched or hugged” during the event at Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata, PTI news agency quoted a source in the SIT as saying. Dutta said Messi had left much earlier than he was supposed to, rather than staying for the full duration of the event.
The organiser told officers that Messi “did not like being touched on the back or being hugged”, and that this had already been conveyed in advance by the foreign security officials responsible for the protection of the footballer, the source said.
“Despite repeated public announcements to restrain the crowd, there was no impact,” the source cited by PTI said. They said that Dutta had told investigators that the manner in which Messi had been “surrounded and embraced was completely unacceptable” to the footballer.
The investigating team is, among other things, looking into how such a large number of people had gained access or been allowed into the ground area during the event, according to PTI.
Messi’s visit to the Salt Lake Stadium lasted just 22 minutes, following which chaos unfolded as politicians, police, VIPs and their entourages surrounded him and his Inter Miami teammates, Luis Suárez and Rodrigo de Paul.
This led to the football icon not being visible to the crowd of fans gathered at the stadium, leaving them enraged. The fans, who had purchased high-priced tickets to attend the event, later vandalised parts of the stadium.
The West Bengal government has set up a SIT team – comprising senior IPS officers Piyush Pandey, Javed Shamim, Supratim Sarkar and Muralidhar – to investigate the incident.
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