More Than 100 Killed In Stampede At A Religious Event In India

More Than 100 Killed In Stampede At A Religious Event In India, Most Of These Victims Were Women And Children.

A stampede at a Hindu religious gathering in northern India on Tuesday killed at least 116 people, many of them were women and children, in one of the country’s worst such catastrophes in years, officials said.

The stampede occurred in a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of the national capital New Delhi, where authorities say thousands had assembled in hot late afternoon heat.

According to Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, the stampede began when a swarm of devotees began surging towards the stage after the event to touch the preacher, who was on his way down.

While the cause was not immediately evident, Hathras district administrator Ashish Kumar speculated that it could have been “due to overcrowding at the time when people were trying to leave the venue”.

Chaitra V., a senior state official, told India Today that some may have lost their footing while seeking water in the heat.

There was wet mud in one area where people could have slipped. Also, because of the heat, people may have made their way to the location where water was stored, which could have contributed to the disaster,” she said, adding that 18 people were hurt and hospitalized.

Police said they had opened an inquiry and threatened to take action against anyone found to be culpable, adding that the gathering may have exceeded the permissible size.

“Lapses by authorities will also be investigated, and action will be taken based on the report, which will be available within 24 hours,” said Prashant Kumar, the state police chief.

Video footage captured by news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority ownership, showed bodies heaped into lorries and laid out in vehicles.

Purses and bags covered in dust were piled up at the site, with people sitting on their haunches sorting through them to find their stuff.

Mobile phones were similarly heaped up, waiting to be claimed by their owners. A video on social media showed a large audience crowded into a tented area, standing and listening to devotional music while waving their hands in the direction of a religious leader sitting on a stage.

It also showed some women hanging on to the bamboo rods supporting the canopy to gain a better look over their heads.

“There must have been about 50,000 people…at the gate on the highway, some people were going left and some people were going right, and the stampede was caused by that confusion,” Suresh Chandra, a witness at the event, told local media.

Seema, a woman who traveled nearly 60 kilometers to attend the event, said she was leaving when the stampede started. She was joined by three relatives, two of whom were killed.

Stampedes and other accidents involving big crowds at religious meetings and pilgrimage sites have occurred in the past, and are frequently attributed to inadequate crowd control.

According to local media accounts, 115 persons were murdered in a stampede in central India in 2013, almost 250 in 2008, and over 340 during an annual pilgrimage in the western state of Maharashtra in 2005.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that the federal government was aiding the state and granted compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,400) to the families of the deceased and 50,000 rupees to those injured.

More Than 100 Killed In Stampede At A Religious Event In India – Watch Video

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