16th August, 1980: Black Day for sports
For the 1980-81 season, Mohun Bagan was quite a formidable side on pen-and-paper. On the other hand, arch rivals East Bengal looked a bit weaker, some of their star players of the previous season being left for Mohammedan Sporting. Yet, the battle was on for the first meeting of the season of the two Calcutta giants in the CFL tie at Eden Gardens, since derby or the ‘boro-match‘ is always considered as the 50-50 match.
There’s a popular opinion in maidan, that EB coach PK Banerjee motivatedly instigated his team’s Dilip Palit to take on Mohun Bagan’s brilliant left winger Bidesh Bose. Palit, actually a left back, was shifted to the other flank for the purpose. Few minutes into the game and Palit was up to his task, charging ugly and unsporting tackles on Bidesh. At one time, gentleman Bidesh lost his cool and retaliated. That triggered the gallery. The fans of the two teams got involved in a serious brawl, resulting in the police forces to ‘lathi-charge’ heavily. The crowd all started to rush down the gallery, falling one over the other, as many as 14 youths got stampede on spot, 2 died later even after being rushed to hospital.
Compton Dutta, the then captain of Mohun Bagan, told with enough conviction in a recent interview with ‘Beyond Routine’ channel that IFA was fully responsible for that untoward incident. They forced the fans of the two rival teams to sit together in the common gallery which led to a serious chaos even before the start of the match. Slowly the situation worsened with the police intervention and the heated up proceedings of the match.
Whatever the reason might be, the 16th Aug’s match took toll of 16 lives at the stadium itself! And surprisingly, all of them are reported to be fans of Mohun Bagan. It’s definitely the Black Day of Indian football. Many a few football enthusiasts ceased to turn up to the grounds since then.
In West Bengal, the day is observed solemnly as the ‘Sports Day’ every year. There’s still a marble plaque at Creek Row in Central Kolkata, a well-known neighbourhood for the mariners, with all the names of sixteen victims of the day. A song was also composed during that year’s Puja for social awareness regarding this – sung by legendary singer Manna Dey, under music direction by Suparna Kanti Ghosh and lyrics written by reputed actor Satya Bandopadhyay.