Dozens of people were killed in a pre-dawn stampede at the Maha Kumbh Mela in northern India on Wednesday, police sources and a Reuters 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 Reuters 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.
A relative of a stampede victim sits between children outside a hospital mortuary following a stampede that occurred before the second “Shahi Snan” (royal bath), at the “Maha Kumbh Mela” or the Great Pitcher Festival, in Prayagraj, India on January 29. – Reuters
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 ambulance 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.