The Uttar Pradesh government has officially claimed 30 deaths during the stampede at the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj last week. The Adityanath-led administration was already under fire for the curious delay in announcing the death toll, and for mismanagement that allegedly precipitated the stampede.
Ever since the number of 30 was floated by Mahakumbh DIG Vaibhav Krishna, there’s been no further official updates apart from the announcement of a judicial probe and a police inquiry.
Newslaundry spent four days at various hospitals in Prayagraj. Our investigation indicates the death toll is possibly closer to 79 than 30.
Here’s how we counted these numbers.
Motilal Nehru Medical College: 69
The state administration repeatedly said the bodies of victims were being handed over to relatives from only one place – Motilal Nehru Medical College in Prayagraj.
Newslaundry reviewed a list that contained 69 names, shown to us by a top official connected with the case. All of them had died on January 29 and had been “brought dead” from the Kumbh. We were informed that by the evening of February 3, 66 bodies had been handed over to families. Three – a man and two women – are still unidentified.
Out of the total of 69 bodies, around 10 were men and the remaining were women. Of the 66 identified bodies, most are from Uttar Pradesh, 14 from Bihar, nine from West Bengal, and one from Gujarat. Some are from Karnataka and Jharkhand. The bodies at the medical college are not being kept in the mortuary. They’re held in a huge freezer space that has its temperature lowered and that was last used during the 2013 stampede at the Kumbh.
We learned a postmortem was not conducted on a single one of the 69 bodies at the medical college. To claim the bodies, families were given a receipt. This reporter saw families being provided with a free ambulance to transport the body back home. A personnel from the UP police would accompany them.
We saw two receipts provided to families and neither carried a date.
An official familiar with the matter told Newslaundry it’s vital that a postmortem takes place. “It is the responsibility of the police to conduct the postmortem. The hospital conducts the postmortem only on their request. The administration here wants to send the bodies home as soon as possible,” he said.
Also, on January 31, the body of a woman was released to a family member from Gopalganj in Bihar. While Newslaundry was there, a family from Gorakhpur arrived with photographs. The woman’s body was theirs; it was brought back in a hurry and the families exchanged corpses.
Swaroop Rani Hospital: 10
A bulletin board at the trauma centre of Swaroop Rani Hospital in Prayagraj listed seven people brought dead, of whom two were unidentified. It also listed 36 injured. Newslaundry photographed this list on February 3. But when we visited the hospital again on February 4, when Newslaundry asked questions on the death toll, it had been taken down.
Additionally, officials at the local police station near the hospital gate are collating information on the dead brought to Swaroop Rani from the Kumbh.
Police documents scrutinised by Newslaundry indicated six unidentified bodies. Four were brought dead to Swaroop Rani Hospital. Two were gravely injured and were brought from a hospital located within the Kumbh, but they subsequently died. One is unidentified; the other has the name Kallu written on his photograph.
Two of the bodies listed in the hospital and at the police station are the same. So, that’s a total of 11 bodies – five from the hospital board list, at least six from police records. However, one of the people on the hospital board list died at 10.27 pm on January 28, which is before the stampede took place.
We removed him from the list. That makes it 10 bodies reported at Swaroop Rani Hospital.
Ajay Saxena, the superintendent in charge of medical services at Swaroop Rani Hospital, confirmed to Newslaundry that the hospital received “seven dead and 36 injured” after the Kumbh stampede. “We sent the bodies of the dead for postmortem. The injured are being treated,” he said.
So, if there were 69 bodies at Motilal Nehru and at least 10 at Swaroop Rani, all brought immediately after the stampede from the Kumbh, the number of dead is likely to be 79.
Armed with this data, Newslaundry visited the office of Prayagraj Chief Medical Officer Arun Kumar Tiwari. We were told he was with the chief minister to prepare for Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Prayagraj. We repeatedly called the chief minister’s office but no one picked up the phone.
We sent Tiwari a questionnaire. This report will be updated if he responds.
‘Natural’ deaths, struggle for death certificates
At about 3 pm on February 3, Dharmendra Gaur wandered through the Kumbh grounds, looking for his father Shyam Lal.
Gaur’s parents and four or five others from their village in UP’s Deoria district had arrived at the Kumbh on January 27. They went to Sangam Nose on the night of January 28 for a dip. The stampede happened in the early hours of January 29 and his parents got separated.
For three days, Gaur’s mother and the villagers searched for Shyam Lal, including at the mortuaries. Gaur soon arrived at Prayagraj from Bengaluru, where he works.
A policeman suggested he check at Swaroop Rani Hospital, where Gaur eventually found his father’s body. The police informed him that if he’d arrived an hour later, the body would have been cremated as it was unclaimed. Dr Rajiv Ranjan, the head of the hospital’s mortuary, then told Gaur to arrange for an ambulance and take the body home. When he said he didn’t know how to do so, an ambulance was arranged for him.
Gaur told Newslaundry these details. We then followed up with the case with the hospital and police.
According to records at the police station, Shyam Lal’s body was brought from the Kumbh in an ambulance at 10.02 am on January 29. He was declared brought dead. A postmortem was conducted at Swaroop Rani Hospital. While the report isn’t available yet, an employee from the postmortem department told Newslaundry that Shyam Lal had died of “natural” causes.
A similar case was reported by Mansingh, who was visiting the Kumbh from Gwalior. He was at Sangam Nose with two cousins and some friends when the stampede broke out. Mansingh said one of his cousins, Kamta Prasad, 50, fell. He died at about 4 am and his body was taken in an ambulance to Sector 20 police station.
“The next day, we took it to a hospital in our own car for postmortem and then brought it back in our own car,” Mansingh said. “We had asked for an ambulance but the police said there wasn’t one.” Since the postmortem report wasn’t in yet, Mansingh said he applied for a panchnama to find out the cause of death.
He also told Newslaundry that officials at Sector 20 police station “made him write” and sign a letter saying Kamta Prasad “suddenly fell ill and died in Kumbh”. Mansingh said he complied.
Meanwhile, relatives of victims told Newslaundry they are struggling to get copies of death certificates for their loved ones. Dhananjay Kumar, for instance, is a resident of Gopalganj in Bihar. His mother Tara Devi died during the stampede. She was body number 46, as per hospital records at Motilal Nehru Medical College.
Kumar took his mother’s body home on the night of January 29. The paperwork from the hospital indicated she was “brought dead”. However, the Bihar government allegedly asked him for a death certificate in order to claim compensation.
So, Kumar returned to Prayagraj where he submitted a letter to an additional divisional magistrate. He said he was told that he’d be informed once the death certificate was prepared.
Similarly, Narayan Singh Lodhi from Chhatarpur lost his daughter-in-law Hukum Bai during the stampede. The body was handed over on January 29 but he’s still waiting for the death certificate. “Even today, my heart shivers when I think of the incident,” he said sadly.
Newslaundry repeatedly contacted Vijay Kumar Anand, the chief officer for Maha Kumbh 2025, for comment. This report will be updated if he responds.
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