Kolkata: All India Football Federation’s president Kalyan Chaubey turned saviour for five football fans, both from Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, after they were detained for allegedly disrupting traffic and fomenting trouble around the Salt Lake Stadium while protesting against the cancellation of a match, an official said on Monday.
Chaubey arranged for their release from police detention after they were picked up by police on Sunday for defying prohibitory orders.
The football fans from city’s three major clubs – Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting – were protesting against the abandonment of the derby between arch rivals of East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, the season’s first match in the country’s oldest tournament Durand Cup due to law and order concerns in Kolkata in the backdrop of protests over a doctor’s murder at the RG Kar Hospital on August 9.
The organisers had abandoned the derby after consulting the local police who expressed their inability in providing adequate forces to manage over 60.000 football fans around the stadium.
However, the fans from the clubs, defying prohibitory orders on Sunday, gathered in groups for their protest.
Sporadic scuffles were also held between the police and football fans when the latter blocked the EM Bypass and disrupted traffic.
As a preventive measure, police detained the five football fans and took them to the Phool Bagan Police Station.
The parents of the arrested football fans sought help from AIFF president Chaubey who, accompanied by a lawyer, went to the police station around 11 pm and got them released.
