/ 4 August 2008

At least 145 killed in India temple stampede

At least 145 pilgrims, including 30 children, were killed in a stampede yesterday that was apparently sparked by rumours of a landslide at a Himalayan hill shrine in northern India.

Officials said most of the people died of suffocation at the Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh. Tens of thousands of pilgrims had converged on the remote temple, about 145km from the state capital of Shimla, to celebrate Shravan Navratras, a nine-day festival that honours the Hindu goddess Shakti, or divine mother.

Police said rumours of a landslide spread through the crowd in the morning, causing panic. Pilgrims at the shrine began to flee down a narrow path and collided with crowds walking towards the temple. With a concrete wall on one side and a vertical drop on the other, many were crushed to death.

There were also reports that a railing at the shrine collapsed under the weight of the crowd, sending many people falling down a narrow, steep staircase.

Witnesses reported dead pilgrims, many dressed in festive clothing, were left lying in the muddy three kilometre road leading to the temple. Relief workers were being hampered by rain late on Sunday night.

Television pictures showed bodies in the grounds of local hospitals, with grieving relatives moving among the dead.

”I rushed to the spot in search of my three children who had gone to [worship] at the hilltop shrine,” Jawahar Khurana told the Press Trust of India news agency as he searched among the bodies at Bilaspur hospital. ”I fail to understand why God was so cruel to us.”

Police confirmed that 145 people had died and 50 were injured. CP Verma, the deputy police chief of Bilaspur, told Associated Press that ”30 children and 38 women have been killed”.

Nearly 50 000 worshippers were expected every day during the festival, with the weekend bringing huge crowds to the foothills of the Himalayas. Many of the dead were from the nearby state of Punjab, and relatives had removed their bodies and taken them off in private cars before the police had arrived.

”A lot of people were confined in a small area,” Verma told Indian television.

Some survivors had complained to local media that roads were blocked with heavy traffic which prevented rescue efforts, a result, it was claimed, of police ineptitude.

Others said that medicines were in short supply at the poorly-stocked local hospital.

Naresh Sood, a shopkeeper, told Times Now television that the administration was caught off-guard by the unexpected surge of worshippers.

He said the number of pilgrims generally went up during this weekend, but this was the first time in the past 20 years that he had witnessed such a huge crowd.

It was also reported that local officials were busy with a plantation drive promoted by the state administration.

Stampedes at temples have occurred many times before at Indian religious festivals, when thousands of people gather to pray, and safety precautions are minimal.

In 2005, about 265 pilgrims were killed in a stampede near a temple in the western state of Maharashtra. Six people died in another accident at a Hindu festival in July in the eastern state of Orissa, where about a million people had gathered in the town of Puri for an annual celebration.

In March, nine people were killed and many more injured at a gathering in central India when a railing broke at a temple, leading to a stampede among 100 000 devotees.

The internet bulletin boards of local newspapers reporting the incident were full of angry correspondence. Typical was Ali from Detroit, who wrote on the Times of India site that ”the core cause of the devaluation of human life in India is extreme population and limited resources. Managing such huge number of devotees will always be a risk as we cannot make thousands of worship-places completely safe given our country is poor.” – guardian.co.uk