KOLKATA — West Bengal authorities began a safety audit of Kolkata's biggest Durga Puja venues on Sunday and police arrested seven people, a day after a stampede at a crowded festival pandal in the north of the city killed 19 people and injured 25.

The crush happened on Saturday evening at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal, when a large crowd queuing in a narrow lane surged forward as heavy rain began, according to police and witnesses. A seven-year-old girl was among the dead, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said, and a hospital source cited by Outlook India said 13 were women.

It struck on Maha Saptami, one of the main days of Bengal's biggest festival, when crowds tour thousands of temporary pavilions across the city. By Sunday, several of Kolkata's best-known pujas had shut to visitors, and officials had been told to tighten crowd control for the rest of the festival, particularly Ashtami and Navami.

"This is a tragic incident. 19 people have lost their lives, 17 of whom died on the spot," Adhikari said. Two of the injured remained in intensive care, he said later.

Kolkata Police said the stampede took place at about 7.40 pm at the pandal's exit gate. Adhikari said the venue had a single opening for both entry and exit, divided by a rope held by home guards, who dropped it and took shelter when the rain started.

Investigators have video of an announcement telling visitors to leave because the structure was about to collapse, a senior police officer told the Press Trust of India, and are trying to identify who made it. "We have gathered sufficient evidence pointing to gross mismanagement by the puja organisers," the officer said. "There was no clear plan to manage the large number of visitors, and everything was handled verbally."

Adhikari said relatives of two of the dead blamed a whistle blown by private security guards for setting off the rush. "I have not seen adequate police presence this year. This resulted in the mismanagement," Chorbagan resident Sanghamitra Bhowmik told PTI.

Police detained 14 people on Saturday night and arrested seven of them the next day, PTI reported. They include the puja committee's secretary and vice-president, the man responsible for its bamboo structure, two people in charge of crowd management and two employees of a private security agency. Police have registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and the seven were produced in court.

Adhikari said a special investigation team led by a sitting Calcutta High Court judge would take over the inquiry if the court's chief justice agreed. Kolkata Police, the municipal corporation and the fire services will be kept off the team to ensure an impartial probe, he said. "Nobody will be spared," he said.

The state government will pay Rs 25 lakh and offer a government job to the family of each person killed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who called the stampede "extremely distressing", announced a further Rs 2 lakh for each death and Rs 50,000 for each injured person from the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.

A high-level panel led by the state's disaster management secretary, Fire Services Director General Anuj Sharma and Additional Director General of Police Javed Shamim began inspecting large pandals on Sunday, starting with Santosh Mitra Square and then Tala Prattoy. It barred food stalls near entry and exit gates and scrapped separate VIP entrances.

Adhikari urged organisers of elaborate theme pujas to install proper lighting and enough gates. "Lives of people are more valuable than themes," he said.

Tala Prattoy, Chetla Agrani, Alipore Sarbojanin and Ballygunge Sarbojanin temporarily stopped admitting visitors on the administration's instructions, the IANS news agency reported. The Santosh Mitra Square committee asked people to stay away.

Kolkata Police Commissioner Ajay Kumar Nand imposed prohibitory orders on the roads around the Chorbagan pandal, in force until Tuesday.

The deaths quickly became a political fight. The Mamata Banerjee faction of the Trinamool Congress, whose government was replaced by Adhikari's Bharatiya Janata Party, blamed the police and the administration for failing to control the crowd. Trinamool MP Abhishek Banerjee demanded accountability, and opposition leaders alleged that Debdeep Adhikari, listed as chief patron of the Chorbagan committee in publicity material, is the chief minister's nephew.

BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya said he had no knowledge of Debdeep Adhikari's involvement. The chief minister condemned efforts to politicise the tragedy.

Vinod Haldar, a rickshaw puller from New Town, lost his 17-year-old daughter. "I have nothing left. There will never be a Durga Puja in our lives again," he told PTI.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah cancelled his puja engagements to visit 14 of the injured at a private hospital on Sunday.

About 3,500 pavilions were set up across Kolkata for this year's festival, according to Al Jazeera. UNESCO added Durga Puja in Kolkata to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2021. India has a long record of deadly crowd crushes. At least 121 people died at a religious gathering in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, in July 2024, and at least 30 were killed at the Maha Kumbh in January 2025.

Adhikari is due to visit bereaved families on Tuesday and Wednesday to hand over compensation cheques. Puja committees will meet at a scaled-back Bijoya Sammilani gathering on October 26 to discuss what went wrong, PTI reported.