At around 9.30 pm on Saturday, as the crush swelled on platform numbers 13 and 14 at New Delhi Railway Station, Ramkumar Manjhi began to panic.
The 44-year-old daily wager from Haryana was at the station with his wife Shanti Devi and their two children – a five-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl – to board a train to their hometown of Nawada in Bihar. Amidst confusion over a platform announcement, a stampede broke out.
Ramkumar’s wife and children fell, and the crowd began pressing in on them. Shanti Devi was motionless. Frightened, Ramkumar picked up his son and handed him over to a stranger, only wanting to keep him off the ground. He then looked around for another saviour who could take his daughter out of the mad crush.
Three Delhi University students, also stuck in the crowd and noticing his panic, came to the rescue. They pulled the child out of the crowd and rushed her to a hospital.
Tragically, she died. Newslaundry learned there were several cases like this that night – of desperate parents turning to strangers for help as their children were trampled under the crowd. Others are still searching for loved ones.
A total of 18 people were killed in the stampede, of which three were girl children and 11 were women.
‘People were dying due to the crowd crush’
Himanshu Mishra, his brother Ritesh, and his friend Tushar Savaria live in Dev Nagar in Delhi’s Karol Bagh. They had reached the station minutes before the stampede broke out. Himanshu is 20 years old, Tushar and Ritesh are both 22. All three study at Delhi University.
“My friend Tushar’s family was to travel to Prayagraj the next day,” Himanshu told Newslaundry. “We had gone to the station to see the arrangements and how crowded it was.”
As the crowd swelled around them, the three young men said they saw people trampling over unconscious bodies on the foot overbridge and the ground. That’s when they saw Ramkumar.
“There was a man lying on the floor with his wife who seemed critical,” Himanshu said. “They had already handed over their boy to someone else and were looking for similar help for a girl child.”
Ramkumar handed his daughter to the three men who held her in their arms. As they stood in the crowd, Himanshu said they attempted to give the child CPR but she “remained motionless”.
“But still there was hope – that she could be revived if we took her to the hospital. But the problem was how to take her to the hospital from the crowd,” Himanshu said.
He quickly gave Ramkumar his phone number. With no escape route through the foot overbridge, the three youths decided to carry the girl across the tracks to platform 16, from where they could exit the station.
“We crossed the tracks and reached a nearby nursing home,” Himanshu said.
The child was declared dead. The nursing home recommended she be taken to LNJP hospital, where other victims of the stampede were being brought. The three youths took her to LNJP, about two km away, using an ambulance called by the nursing home. They arrived around midnight.
“At LNJP, the child was given an electric shock,” Himanshu said. “But she couldn’t be revived.” She was declared dead. “We could not save her despite our best efforts.”
Himanshu, like several other eyewitnesses, told Newslaundry there weren’t enough police personnel deputed at the railway station that night, despite 2,600 more non-reserved tickets than usual being sold in a two-hour period before the stampede.
“The arrangement was so bad that the FOB stairs were choked,” he said, referring to the foot overbridge. “People were dying due to the crowd crush. I could see from the stairs that people were dying and bodies were being dragged out of the crowd.”
Himanshu found Ramkumar at the emergency ward of LNJP hospital about one and a half hours later. Ramkumar’s wife Shanti Devi had been declared brought dead, and Himanshu then told Ramkumar his daughter had died too. Ramkumar was later reunited with his son at a police station.
Desperate searches, calls for help
At LNJP hospital, Newslaundry met Bhola Shah who was frantically searching for his wife Meena Devi.
“She was planning to go to Prayagraj. She was part of a group of five or six people,” said Bhola, in his 30s, outside the hospital mortuary. “None of their phones were reachable.”
Bhola searched the hospital’s emergency ward and the mortuary but couldn’t find his wife. “We are going to other hospitals to trace her,” he said.
Ankit Shah, a resident of Rohtak, told Newslaundry that he was at the railway station with his sister and his mother Manisha Devi. They were boarding a train to Prayagraj when the stampede broke out. With crowds thronging the platform, Manisha fell onto the tracks. Seconds later, a train – Newslaundry could not confirm which train – passed over her.
Manisha survived but fractured her hip.
“There was no police presence. A railway official told me to call 102,” said Ankit, who works as an electrician. “After some time, help arrived. Two porters and a railway official helped carry her out of the station.”
Manisha was admitted to LNJP hospital. Her son hopes she’ll be discharged within the next 24 hours.
Newslaundry had reported on how at 4 am on Sunday, Railways authorities took the unusual decision to distribute large quantities of cash – Rs 10 lakh each – to families of those killed during the stampede. Read our report here.
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