By IANS
New Delhi : Five days after some 30 teens were nearly electrocuted inside a theatre here during a rock show and endured acute trauma, both the organisers of the event, Channel V, and the state-run owner of the property have washed their hands off the incident.
What is more, even the police are yet to register a case against those liable for negligence though the electric shock the teens experienced for around 30 seconds left them traumatised, gasping for life and unable to speak.
They experienced the shock when they stepped on a naked live wire at the Hamsadhwani Theatre run by the commerce ministry's India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) at the Pragati Maidan exhibition ground to watch the concert by Superfuzz.
Channel V, a private music and entertainment channel, was the organiser.
"We are not responsible for the incident. The liability lies with Channel V as they did not bother to take our permission while installing temporary wires inside the theatre," said ITPO spokesman S.H. Khan.
"When we contacted Channel V to inquire about the incident, their officials misbehaved with us and said: 'You have nothing to do with it'," Khan told IANS. "They said nothing had happened."
Repeated calls to extract a response from Channel V proved futile. When contacted, one of their officials, identified as Rakesh, said he would get back to IANS. But even hours after the promise, he did not do that. Subsequent calls and SMS messages to him drew a blank.
The police have a different story to tell.
"We can't register a case on a mere presumption that 30 people would have died in the incident," said Madan Lal Chander, the additional station house officer for Tilak Marg police station.
"We don't know what had happened during the concert, no such incident has been brought to our notice so far. No one has even approached us or the police control room to lodge any complaint," Chander told IANS.
"But we would definitely take up the case, if approached by anyone with a formal complaint. It is just the media which has hyped the issue."
Rather than helping the victims, some parents of the teens said police officials were harassing them with inane questions.
"We have received numerous calls from the police officials asking irrelevant questions," said one such parent who did not wish to be identified.
"Nobody has asked us to file a formal complaint. Policemen just keep calling and say they will come after a few days to record my son's statement," the parent said as her ward was recuperating at a hospital from not just the physical pain inflicted by the incident but the acute trauma of suffering 30 seconds of shock.
According to eyewitnesses, there were at least 800 people inside the theatre and within seconds the 30 youth were seen writhing in pain, all lying on the ground with eyes dilated and their bodies shaking profusely.
"Some of them had their wide open but not a decibel of sound. I could imagine the pain. It was a ghastly site to see friends and fellow teens suffer such a trauma in front of our eyes," said one eyewitness.
The organisers then switched off the power supply and left the place in darkness but did little else as people ran helter-skelter trying to give succour to those who had suffered most.