TTD refutes stampede claim, says teenager died of heart attack

Tirupati:A 16-year-old boy passed away on Tuesday while undergoing treatment at the Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS) Hospital in Tirupati, days after he collapsed at the Matrusri Tarigonda Vengamamba Annaprasadam Canteen in Tirumala on Saturday evening.

The victim, Manjunath, son of Nagaratnamma and Mallesh, had travelled to Tirumala along with 12 family members from Bengaluru’s Majestic area and reached Tirumala on Saturday.

After offering prayers to Lord Venkateswara, the family visited the Annaprasadam Canteen the same evening. It was in the canteen that Manjunath fell unconscious while running up a ramp.

Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) staff on duty at the canteen rushed him to Ashwini Hospital in Tirumala. Following the advice of doctors there, the family shifted Manjunath to SVIMS Hospital in Tirupati in a TTD ambulance for advanced medical care.

Manjunath suffered a heart attack at SVIMS on Tuesday morning and died.

Following speculations on social media and certain news outlets that the teenager had died in a stampede, TTD’s additional executive officer (EO) Ch. Venkaiah Chowdary told media at the Annamaiah Bhavan in Tirumala on Tuesday that there had been no stampede and Manjunath had died after a fall in the canteen.

The EO asked media representatives to report facts responsibly. He clarified that, in fact, the teenager had been battling a chronic heart condition since the age of nine. He had received treatment for the same at Jayadev Hospital in Bengaluru.

Manjunath’s father Mallesh corroborated this and requested that his son’s body be handed over to the family without a post-mortem.

“The entire sequence of events has been captured on CCTV cameras,” Chowdary stated. He showed to media footage that depicted Manjunath collapsing on his own at the canteen.