Rahul Dravid, the legendary Indian cricketer and former coach of the Men in Blue, expressed anguish over the Bengaluru stampede that claimed 11 lives and left more than 56 several injured during the celebration of Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB) IPL 2025 victory. Dravid, who hails from Bengaluru, termed the celebrations by RCB and the tragedy that unfolded outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium as "unfortunate" and "sad".

The tragedy struck Bengaluru after RCB won the IPL for the first time in their fourth attempt in the final. They beat Punjab Kings by 6 runs in Ahmedabad to lift the trophy, which saw Virat Kohli, the legendary Indian batter, finally ending his IPL trophy jinx.

But the celebration in Bengaluru, just a day after the final, saw nearly 2.5 lakh fans gathered in and around the Chinnaswamy Stadium to catch a glimpse of RCB's trophy-winning stars, resulting in a chaos and stampede that claimed lives and left several injured.

Following the tragedy, the High Court of Karnataka took suo motu cognisance of the incident and posed tough questions to the Karnataka state government and RCB about organising such an event without being careful about crowd management and without taking any proper measures to avoid any untoward incident.

"Very disappointing. It's very sad," Dravid told NDTV. "Bengaluru is a sports-passionate city. I come from here. People over here love all sports, not just cricket. They follow all the sports and also all the sporting teams, be it a football team or a kabaddi team."

"It's really heartbreaking that such an unfortunate incident happened. Our thoughts go out to everyone who unfortunately lost their lives and those who were injured. Such a tragedy shouldn't have happened," Dravid, who played for RCB between 2008 and 2010, said.

However, Dravid, who is the coach of Rajasthan Royals in the IPL, refused to wade into the political slugfest as the state government and the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) are under fire for felicitating the event despite the police pleading that organising the bus parade was not possible.

After the High Court of Karnataka posed several tough questions, the state government suspended five police officers, including the Bengaluru City Police commissioner.

On the KSCA front, A Shankar and ES Jairam resigned from their respective positions of secretary and treasurer of the state association, taking "moral responsibility" for the incident. Meanwhile, Nikhil Sosale, marketing head of RCB, was arrested on June 6, with an FIR also being lodged against the IPL franchise.

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