Will there be a CBI inquiry into KK’s death? here’s what we know

A division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Monday accepted a PIL seeking a CBI probe into the death of playback singer KK. Advocate Rabishankar Chattopadhyay had appealed in the Calcutta High Court seeking a CBI inquiry into KK’s death. On Monday afternoon, a division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj allowed the PIL.

In his appeal, petitioner Rabishankar Chattopadhyay argued that there was complete mismanagement in the Nazrul Manch on that fateful evening and negligence on the part of the local administration was one of the reasons for the chaos. Therefore, there is a need to identify the finer points of negligence behind the mismanagement and for this a CBI inquiry is necessary, argued the PIL.

On 31 May, KK died in Kolkata after performing at Gurudas College’s annual college festival at Nazrul Manch in south Kolkata. During the event there were several allegations of mismanagement at the venue where more than twice the seating capacity of the auditorium was entered. In fact, KK had complained of restlessness several times during his performances.

It is learned that the auditorium’s air-conditioning machines lost their desired cooling effect due to overcrowding, leading to suffocation at the venue.

The BJP Lok Sabha member from West Bengal’s Bankura constituency has already written a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah demanding a central agency probe into the incident. And now the division bench of the Calcutta High Court has added a new dimension to the whole sequence by accepting the PIL seeking a CBI inquiry.