Dozens of people have been killed and many others were injured in a crowd crush at the world’s largest religious festival in northern India, police said.
“Thirty devotees have unfortunately died,” senior police officer Vaibhav Krishna told a press conference on Wednesday. “Ninety injured were taken to the hospital” after the stampede at the Mahakumbh Mela in the city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh.
The incident occurred early in the morning near the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
As pilgrims rushed to participate in a sacred day of ritual bathing, people sleeping and sitting on the ground near the rivers told the AFP news agency that they were trampled by huge swells of devotees coming towards them in the darkness.
Footage of rescue teams carrying victims away from the religious site showed clothes, shoes and other discarded belongings strewn across the ground, as police officers carried stretchers bearing what appeared to be bodies of victims draped with blankets to waiting ambulances.
A Rapid Action Force (RAF) – a special unit called in during crises – had been deployed to the area to bring the situation under control, and rescue efforts were under way, officials said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the stampede “extremely sad” and offered his “deepest condolences” to relatives of those killed.
“I wish for the speedy recovery of all injured,” he added.
Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state where the festival city of Prayagraj is located, said the stampede was set off when some devotees tried to jump barricades put up to manage crowds.
The Mahakumbh Mela, or Great Pitcher Festival, is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and up to 400 million pilgrims were expected to visit before the festival’s final day on February 26.
The festival is being held on a 4,046-hectare (10,000-acre) site where makeshift tents have been constructed to accommodate pilgrims. Wednesday marks one of the most sacred days in the six-week festival, with holy men due to lead pilgrims in a procession of sin-cleansing bathing at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in Prayagraj.
Held every 12 years in four locations – Prayagraj, Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain – the festival is seen by Hindus as an opportunity for them to wash their sins away as they gather on the banks of sacred rivers to take part in a day of ritual bathing.
Deadly crowd crushes regularly occur at Indian religious festivals, and the Mahakumbh – often called simply the Kumbh – boasts a grim track record for such incidents.
More than 400 people died on a single day of the festival in 1954 after being trampled or drowned, in what remains one of the deadliest incidents of its kind.
Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013 – the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.
Police this year had installed hundreds of cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the encampment, with a control centre meant to alert staff if sections of the crowd became too dense and posed a safety threat.
