More than 100 people – most of them women – have been killed in a deadly stampede reportedly triggered by a dust storm at an overcrowded religious event.
The death toll rose sharply on Wednesday (AEST) as bodies piled up outside a hospital near the site of the tragedy in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India’s north.
The victims included 108 women, seven children and one man.
The BBC reports that authorities had granted permission for 80,000 people to gather in an area of open ground to hear a Hindu religious leader, but many more turned up.
As the huge crowd was leaving through a narrow exit, witnesses said there was a “commotion”, and a wild dust storm added to the chaos and confusion, the BBC reported.
France 24 also reported the dust storm had sparked the panic.
“The incident happened due to overcrowding at the time when people were trying to leave the venue,” Hathras district administrator Ashish Kumar said.
An unidentified witness told broadcaster India Today that there was a narrow exit at the venue: “As we tried to exit towards a field, suddenly a commotion started and we didn’t know what to do.”
Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state with more than 200 million people.
The state’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered an investigation and speculated on the exact cause. He said a crowd of devotees had started pushing towards the stage after the event to touch the preacher, who was coming down.
Another senior state official, Chaitra V, told India Today that people may have lost their footing as they sought water in the heat.
“There was wet mud at one place where people may have slipped. Also because of the heat, people may have made their way to the spot where water was kept and that could have caused the incident as well,” she said.
Police promised action against anyone found to be responsible, adding that the gathering may have been larger than had been permitted.
“Lapses by authorities will also be investigated and action will be taken on the basis of the report which will be available within 24 hours,” state police chief Prashant Kumar said.
Video clips from news agency ANI showed bodies piled into the back of trucks and laid out in vehicles.
Purses and bags covered in dust were heaped up at the venue, with people sitting on their haunches sifting through them to identify their belongings.
Mobile phones were similarly piled together, waiting to be claimed by their owners.
A video on social media showed a large crowd packed into a tented area, standing and listening to devotional tunes as they waved their hands in the direction of the religious leader who sat on a stage.
It also showed some women hanging on to the bamboo poles holding up the canopy to get a better view above the heads of the large crowd.
Reuters could not immediately verify the social media images.
“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, the stampede was caused in that confusion,” Suresh Chandra, a witness who was at the gathering, told local media.
Seema, a woman who travelled from a town almost 60 kilometres away to attend the event, said she was leaving the venue when the stampede happened. She was accompanied by three relatives, two of whom were killed.
Stampedes and other accidents involving large crowds at religious gatherings and pilgrimage sites have happened in the past and are often blamed on poor crowd management.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the federal government was assisting the state and announced a compensation of 200,000 rupees ($3600) to the families of the dead and 50,000 rupees to those injured.
Live News
