Scattered garlands, strewn bangles and charred tea stalls and shops in western India bore mute testimony on Wednesday to a stampede that crushed at least 257 Hindu devotees on a temple pilgrimage.
As wailing relatives collected their family members’ bodies, taking them home in their arms, transporting them in bullock carts or strapped to car roofs, officials sought to piece together the reasons for Tuesday’s stampede, India’s deadliest in half a century.
Most of the victims were women and children.
”My sister had gone with her friends to pray and then she was caught in the stampede,” said a dazed Dashart Sonar as he took away the body of his 25-year-old sibling, shrouded in a white cloth, for cremation from a hospital in Wai near the Mandradevi temple where the tragedy struck.
”Every year she used to come here but we never expected something like this to happen,” he said.
Rescue workers shifted the bodies of the victims from the temple area to hospitals where they lay on blocks of ice or in neat rows on the floor, limbs awkwardly protruding from cloths draping them.
Despite the disaster, scores of people were still visiting the centuries-old temple, 300km south of Bombay, to worship the goddess Kalubai on Wednesday.
The goddess is revered by mainly Hindu India’s farming and warrior castes.
Hundreds of thousands had flocked to the 300-year-old temple on Tuesday to mark the auspicious occasion of the full moon. The temple is widely frequented by lower-caste Hindus who take part every year in the festival.
Sometimes millions of people mass under hazardous safety conditions for religious events where there are seldom proper exit routes if disaster strikes.
Maharashtra state authorities are still confused about how exactly the chain of horror unfolded in which pilgrims were crushed to death by others scrambling on top of them.
But police and many witnesses said a coconut-breaking ritual at the temple doors appears to have triggered the event.
Police Superintendent CP Kumbhar said the coconut water had made the ground slippery and some pilgrims who were dancing as they held the goddess’s idol above their heads fell over.
While others toppled on top of them, people became trapped in the narrow path to the temple as hordes of devotees kept surging in, witnesses said.
When police started trying to control the crowd, people started shoving back. Some pilgrims turned violent and started torching shops on the route to the temple and there was an electrical short circuit, witnesses said.
The flames caused cooking gas cylinders to explode and sparked more panic as crowds struggled to escape the flames.
”Then there was total chaos and that was when the stampede got really bad,” said Shankar Vadare ( 21), a sweets vendor outside the temple.
”Most of the deaths are because of suffocation caused by the stampede. There are some who suffered minor burn injuries but the deaths are largely because of suffocation,” said senior district government official Sharad Jadhav.
One of the pilgrims, Shivan Chavan (40), was on top of the hill with two friends when the stampede broke out.
”Suddenly there was a lot of pushing of people. There was huge panic and chaos. Women and children were crying. Somehow I got down safely but I don’t know where my friends are.”
Two years ago, at least 39 people died when pilgrims panicked on the banks of a sacred river northeast of Bombay. In January 1999, more than 50 people died in southern India during a stampede at a Hindu pilgrimage site in Kerala.
In 1954, 800 were reported to have died in a religious stampede in northern Allahabad city.
Tuesday’s tragedy came on the eve of Republic Day, one of India’s biggest official holidays. Maharashtra cancelled celebrations because of the deaths.
It also came nearly a month after tsunamis smashed into southern Indian coastal areas, killing close to 11 000 and leaving nearly 5 700 missing. Four years earlier, a brutal earthquake struck Gujarat state, killing 20 000.
”Series of tragedies haunt India around Republic Day,” The Pioneer newspaper said in a headline. ”We are a resilient race but must God test us so often?” — Sapa-AFP