An Aeronautical engineering student from Delhi was gored to death by a bull and a 40-year-old died of heart attack at a mega jallikattu event organised at M. Pudhur near Tirupattur in Sivaganga district on Sunday. Over 80 bull tamers and spectators were injured by bulls, while chaos reigned supreme over the distribution of prizes, prompting the police to use force to restore order.
Police said student A. Thirunavukarasu (26) had come to his native village at Melamaganam, near Tirupattur, for witnessing the jallikattu when a bull let out in the arena ran berserk and gored him to death.
Baskaran (40), a spectator from Pazhanivasal, near Karaikudi, died of heart attack. At least 81 people, mostly spectators, sustained injuries as the widely publicised jallikattu event with tamers and bulls arriving from various parts of the State turned chaotic.
Sri Lankan ministers Senthil Thondaman and Arumuga Thondaman, who had ancestral connections with Pattamangalam in Tirupattur taluk, were among those who witnessed the event. Some of the bulls owned by them participated in the event. It was not immediately known whether their bulls won prizes.
Police said trouble broke out after the organisers and revenue officials wanted to cut short the event. However, bull tamers and those who had brought bulls from other districts such as Madurai, Pudukottai, Salem and Coimbatore objected to this.
Chased away
At one stage, the organisers chased the tamers away using force when the latter protested over non-distribution of a refrigerator to a winner and started taking away the prizes. The police intervened to restore order.
“After police intervention, prizes were distributed to the winners and the situation was brought back to normal,” Superintendent of Police T. Jayachandran told The Hindu . The event ended and all those who turned up dispersed, he added.
Earlier in the morning, trouble broke out when hundreds of spectators turned up to witness the event as the organisers – the Tamil Nadu Jallikattu Padukappu Nala Sangam and villagers of M. Pudur – had announced that they had erected galleries to accommodate about 5,000 spectators.
The PWD officials, who inspected the stability of the structures, however, granted permission only for about 1,000 spectators. More than 1,000 bull tamers and 900 bulls from different parts of the State turned up. After the mandatory checks, the organisers allowed 520 tamers and 290 bulls to participate in the event, sources said.
