Lionel Messi was tied in ropes and craned out of his perch off VIP Road on a day the legend led the Argentina squad to the US for the football World Cup.
As the world looks forward to seeing the wizard on the pitch one last time, Calcutta’s Messi will find a place at a warehouse of the state public works department.
The Messi statue in the city, dubbed dangerous by engineers after it was found swaying in the wind, has finally been removed.
Two large cranes and at least 40 personnel arrived at the Lake Town-VIP Road crossing on Monday morning.
Machines cut through the bolts at the base of the statue, making it movable. One of the cranes lifted the statue. As it lowered the statue onto an open-deck truck, the second crane pulled it by its feet onto the truck’s deck.
The statue was laid on the truck face-up, looking like Gulliver in Lilliput island.
The truck then made its way slowly down VIP Road, with a plastic sheet wrapped around Messi’s face.
The statue had one privilege that matched what the legend enjoyed in Calcutta on December 9: both had a police pilot.
A policeman on a motorcycle moved ahead of the convoy carrying the statue. PWD engineers followed in their cars.
“For now, we have kept the statue in one of our community warehouses. Where and when it will be installed next is not a decision that we take. We will do as instructed,” a senior state government official said. “Our objective was to ensure the removal of the statue without causing any damage to it,” he added.
As the fibreglass Messi moved out of the spotlight in Calcutta, the real Messi arrived in Kansas City with the 26-member Argentina squad. The team features 17 players who were part of the side that lifted the World Cup in Qatar four years ago.
Messi’s presence in the World Cup came under a cloud after he walked off the field in the 73rd minute clutching his left hamstring while playing for Inter Miami on May 24.
The moment sent shivers across the football world, raising questions over whether he would be fit for the quadrennial tournament. His club later said he had not suffered any major injury.
On May 26, an inspection by engineers of the Bengal PWD found the statue unsafe. Bidhannagar’s BJP MLA Sharadwat Mukherjee had flagged concerns about its stability after he said he saw it swaying in the wind.
The initial plan was to pull down the statue, a decision later reversed amid fears within the administration that it could outrage fans in a World Cup year.
“The statue was installed without fully considering safety, but Messi is a legend, and any statue of him has to be treated with respect,” a PWD official said.
A professor from IIT Kharagpur visited Lake Town on May 29 to inspect the statue and suggest how it could be removed. The PWD had by then secured the statue with harnesses. The ground around it was barricaded.
On Monday, police cordoned off a section of road at the Lake Town crossing during the removal operation.
Pedestrians stopped to watch the landmark, which always drew glances to the left while driving to the airport along VIP Road, being taken down from its perch. Passengers inside buses stuck out their necks to watch the giant cranes at work.
