"You put me in jail for 38 days. Now it's my turn." That's the opening shot from Satadru Dutta, the sports promoter who organised Lionel Messi's GOAT Tour of India — and who spent over a month behind bars after the Salt Lake Stadium descended into chaos on December 13, 2025.
Dutta has been largely silent since the incident. With the AITC out of power in West Bengal following elections, he's decided that silence is over.
What actually happened that day
The GOAT Tour brought Messi, Luis Suarez, and Rodrigo de Paul — all three current Inter Miami teammates — to Kolkata. Tickets started at around ₹4,000. Thousands of fans turned up to see the man they'd watched on TV their whole lives. The event was supposed to run an hour. Messi left in 25 minutes.
According to Dutta, the collapse wasn't accidental. He alleges that then-Bengal sports minister Arup Biswas used his influence to push unregistered entrants into the stadium, overriding event security. Biswas was photographed alongside Messi during the visit. Dutta claims he was ignored when he raised the alarm, and that police stood by while the situation unravelled. Messi, reportedly unhappy with the disorder, walked. The crowd turned violent and damaged stadium property. Dutta was detained at Kolkata airport hours later as he attempted to fly to Hyderabad for the tour's second leg.
He spent 38 days in jail.
Dutta isn't asking for sympathy — he's filing cases
His social media statements, posted in a mix of Bengali and English, are pointed and personal. He claims Biswas's team forced his staff to issue unauthorised ground access cards, and when they refused, those staff members were locked in a room. "They blackmailed my event. They sabotaged everything," he wrote.
On the legal front, he's promising defamation cases and says he'll take it to the Supreme Court if he has to. "Damage ar defamation case ami korboi. Sesh ami dheke charbo" — he will fight to the end.
A press conference is coming, he says, where "everything will be exposed."
Three years of work, one of the most high-profile football events ever staged in India, and it collapsed inside half an hour. Whatever the courts eventually decide, the question of who really broke the Salt Lake Stadium that day is about to get a lot louder.
