LUCKNOW: At least 116 people, many of them women and children, were killed in a stampede at a Hindu religious gathering in north India on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the country’s worst such tragedies in years.

The stampede happened in a village in Hathras district, about 200km southeast of New Delhi, where authorities said thousands had gathered in sweltering late afternoon temperatures for a sermon by a popular preacher, but a fierce dust storm sparked panic as people were leaving. Many were crushed or trampled, falling on top of each other, with some collapsing into a roadside drain in the chaos.

“The attendees were exiting the venue when a dust storm blinded their vision, leading to a melee and the subsequent tragic incident,” said Chaitra V., divisional commissioner of Aligarh city in Uttar Pradesh state, told AFP. “We... are focusing on providing relief and medical aid for the victims,” she added.

Hours after the tragedy, she told reporters the toll had surged past a hundred. Most of the dead were women, according to state chief medical officer Umesh Kumar Tripathi, who told reporters “many injured” have been hospitalised.

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Video clips recorded by news agency ANI showed bodies piled into the back of trucks and laid out in vehicles.

“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.

‘Crushed to death’

Lines of ambulances rushed the injured to hospitals. Wailing women and crying men gathered outside one mortuary in the town of Etah, where many of the dead were taken, seeking news of their relatives.

“When the sermon finished, everyone started running out,” Shakuntala, a woman who gave only one name, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

“People fell in a drain by the road. They started falling one on top of the other and got crushed to death.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced compensation of $2,400 to the next of kin of those who died and $600 to those injured in the “tragic incident”.

“My condolences are with those who have lost their loved ones... I wish for the speedy recovery of all the injured,” Modi wrote on social media platform X.

Grim record

Religious gatherings in India have a grim track record of deadly incidents caused by poor crowd management and safety lapses.

At least 112 people were killed in 2016 after a huge explosion caused by a banned fireworks display at a temple in Kerala state marking the Hindu new year.

Another 115 devotees were killed in 2013 in a stampede at a bridge near a temple in Madhya Pradesh.

In 2008, 224 pilgrims were killed in a stampede at a hilltop temple in Jodhpur.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2024