Tiruppur (Tamil Nadu), Jun 5 (PTI) The stampede at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru that killed 11 people has even given a jolt to a small town in the interior of Tamil Nadu.
Udumalaipettai, a small town in Tiruppur district, the textile capital of Tamil Nadu, with a population of about 75,000, woke to the tragic news that their much-feted 'daughter of the soil', 28-year-old techie Kamatchi Devi, died in a crowd crush.
As the town waited for Devi's mortal remains, people poured in, expressing their grief at having to be a witness to the 'unbearable loss of the town'.
"Literally everyone in our town knows the family, as they have been running a school for the underprivileged here for nearly 40 years now. Murthy's only daughter is Devi. The school was started by Devi's grandfather. We cannot believe that this has happened to that family," said a neighbour to PTI Videos.
Devi's mortal remains reached this town at about 4.30 pm on Thursday.
Stating that Devi had even gone to the United States to pursue her MS, a rare event in that part of the world, one of her relatives, Jayanthi, said it was most likely that Devi must have given in to peer pressure and gone to the ticketed event organised at Chinnaswamy Stadium on June 4 to celebrate RCB's historic IPL win.
"She was working for Amazon and we were told that most tech companies had declared a holiday yesterday. She must have thought it would be fun to go out with her friends. What happened is really tragic. Devi had so many ideas to make the school, run by her father Murthy, popular," added Jayanthi.
Jayanthi said Dev's body will be kept for public viewing at the school grounds before the last rites are performed.
Vidhya Varalakshmi, another neighbour, said Devi was a soft-spoken and extremely kind-hearted person.
"We all feel like we have lost someone from our family. We are unable to digest that her life is snuffed out at such a young age. We all thought she was going to accomplish many great things for our town and that school," said Varalakshmi.