West Bengal police gives gun salute to singer KK in presence of Mamata Banerjee

The West Bengal government on Wednesday gave a gun salute to singer Krishnakumar Kunnath, better known as KK who died soon after a concert in Kolkata on Tuesday night, at Rabindra Sadan in the city in the presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

An ambulance carrying KK’s body in a wooden coffin was brought to Rabindra Sadan premises at 2.30 pm. Senior ministers stood beside KK’s wife and children during the gun salute that took place at 2.43 pm.

The singer’s body will be taken straight to the airport through a green corridor. His family will leave for Mumbai around 5 pm.

Banerjee, who took a flight to the city from Andal airport in Paschim Bardhaman, reached Rabindra Sadan around 1.30 pm to supervise the arrangements while the post-mortem was being conducted at SSKM Hospital, barely 200 metres away.

Staff members of Nazrul Manch where the concert was held said people were more than the capacity wherein the crowd was jumping from the boundary and some broke the gates.

“KK’s show was at 7 pm. He was sweating and took water in between. He left only after completing the programme. Our seat capacity was 2,482 but the crowd was more than double the capacity. The crowd broke the gate. The spray was used outside the auditorium to disperse the crowd. It was done by their (organiser) bouncers. No spray was used inside the auditorium,” Chandan Maity, Nazrul Mancha staff told news agency ANI.

Doctors at the hospital said they suspected “cardiac arrest” to be the cause of the death. Police have registered a case of ‘unnatural death’ and are probing the matter.

A case has been lodged in New Market Police Station – under whose jurisdiction falls the five-star hotel where KK was staying, and from where he was taken to a hospital.

The versatile singer who recorded songs in regional languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, and Bengali, KK died aged 53.