PRAYAGRAJ: Dozens of people were killed in a pre-dawn stampede at the Maha Kumbh Mela in northern India on Wednesday, police sources and a media witness said, as tens of millions gathered to take a dip in sacred river waters on the most auspicious day of a six-week Hindu festival.
Bodies were still being brought to the local Moti Lal Nehru Medical College hospital morgue more than 12 hours after the tragedy at the world’s biggest gathering of humanity, although authorities were yet to officially announce the casualty numbers.
Nearly 40 bodies were brought to the morgue, three police sources told Reuters.
A media witness counted 39 bodies inside the morgue. One of the three police sources and a fourth officer said all 39 were stampede victims.
“More bodies are coming in. We have nearly 40 bodies here. We are transferring them out as well and handing over to families one by one,” one of the sources said.
There were 15 ambulances outside the morgue and about half a dozen people looking inside for their loved ones.
Senior police officer Vaibhav Krishna said when he was reached for comment that police could not give the official numbers because they were busy with crowd management.
Distraught relatives queued up to identify those killed by the stampede, which occurred when crowds surged towards the confluence of three rivers, where immersion is considered particularly sacred.
Some witnesses spoke of a huge push that caused devotees to fall on each other, while others said closure of routes to the water brought the dense crowd to a standstill and caused people to collapse due to suffocation.
“There was commotion, everybody started pushing, pulling, climbing over one another. My mother collapsed…then my sister-in-law. People ran over them,” said Jagwanti Devi, 40, as she sat in an ambu-lance with the bodies of her relatives.
Saroja, who had traveled for the festival from the southern city of Belagavi and gave only her first name, blamed police for the deaths of four members of her family.
“Police didn’t make proper arrangements. They are responsible for this,” she wailed. Police have said they are doing all they can to manage the vast crowds.
An official at Prayagraj’s SRN Hospital, where some of the injured were taken, said those who died had either suffered heart attacks or had comorbidities like diabetes.
“People came in with fractures, broken bones [… ] Some collapsed on the spot and were brought dead,” said the official, who did not want to be named.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences to “devotees who have lost their loved ones”, without specifying the number of dead.
Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state where the festival city of Prayagraj is located, said the stampede was set off when some devotees tried to jump barricades put up to manage crowds.
At the scene after the stampede, some people sat on the ground crying, while others stepped over belongings left by those trying to escape the crush. –Agencies
