Lionel Messi tour chaos: Organiser boards chartered plane with football icon, deplaned minutes before take-off; arrested
Times of India | 14 December 2025
KOLKATA: Cops on Saturday arrested event organiser Satadru Dutta in dramatic circumstances after taking him off a chartered plane that he had boarded with football icon Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami co-players, Luis Suarez and Rodrigo De Paul.
Dutta - who had advertised Saturday's hyped event as "A Satadru Dutta Initiative" - tried to pre-empt his arrest by negotiating with cops on the tarmac itself, offering a personal bond to return the money to around 60,000 fans who paid between Rs 5,000 and Rs 16,000 to watch the star footballer. "Dutta was taken away from the airport shortly after the Gulfstream executive jet carrying Messi and six others took off at 2.34pm," an airport official said.
The plane - which was to depart two hours earlier - took off after the pilot refused to delay the flight any longer, an air traffic control official said. Witnesses said Dutta was deplaned from the long-range business jet around 1pm but stayed in a car on the tarmac until after Messi's flight departed.
"He initially argued that he was not responsible for the fiasco at Salt Lake Stadium, then offered to give a bond that the paying spectators would be refunded and finally stated that he needed to fly with the international footballers for the rest of the GOAT India Tour 2025. But the police told him they could not allow him to fly off," an official present on the tarmac said. The plane, with three crew members, took off for Hyderabad with seven passengers instead of eight.
‘Dutta should not be allowed to leave Kol’
Dutta arrived at the airport with Messi and others around 12.25 pm, underwent a check and boarded aircraft at 12.40 pm. DGP Rajeev Kumar arrived at the airport in five minutes of Dutta boarding the plane and left after issuing instructions: Dutta should not be allowed to leave Kolkata, he was believed to have said. ADGP (law and order) Jawed Shamim said at a press meet “processes (were) on and investigations (were) on”.