Crushed to death: Haridwar joins India's tragic list of stampedes
Stampedes at temples and other religious places in India have claimed nearly 1,000 lives in the last 10 years in the country.
Before Tuesday's stampede at an ashram in Haridwar which claimed 16 lives, there was a huge melee at the famed Sabarimala shrine in Kerala that killed more than 104 devotees on January 14 this year. More than 60 people were also injured in that stampede which happened when a jeep crashed into homebound pilgrims at Pulmedu, a remote area in Kerala's Idukki district.
Reports from Haridwar, meanwhile, paint a picture of utter chaos.
Witnesses claim the tragedy - at one of India's holiest sites - occurred when an elderly woman slipped while walking through a barricaded route close to where 1,551 'yagyas' - or fire rituals - were on.
"Once the woman fell, there was commotion. The crowds, however, kept pushing ahead. In no time, people began to fall over one another, crushing many," an activist for Gayatri Parivar, the organiser, said.
The activist as well as local officials said the dead included 14 women and two men. Most were aged and were suffocated to death. Around 40 others were injured in varying degrees.
Ambulances with waling sirens rushed the dead, the dying and the injured to a 10-bed hospital that the organisers had set up to deal with emergency situations.
On Tuesday itself, an estimated four to five lakh people had thronged Haridwar. "We knew about the crowds and we had told everyone including the media," the spokesperson said.
Gayatri Parivar organised the event aimed at propagating the Gayatri Mantra. It also marked the centenary celebrations of the group's founder, Pandit Sitaram Sharma.
Among those expected to attend the event are the chief ministers of Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare and the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. It is not known if the VIPs will still make it to the event,
But the list of stampedes continue.
On March 4, 2010, about 63 people were killed and 15 injured when a gate at Kripalu Maharaj's Ashram at Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh collapsed during distribution of food on the occasion of a ritual, for which nearly 10,000 people had converged.
On September 30, 2008, nearly 250 devotees were killed and over 60 injured in a stampede at Chamunda Devi temple in Rajasthan's Jodhpur city. The incident took place when there was a rumour of a bomb going off. More than 10,000 people had turned up at the famous temple for a darshan of the Hindu goddess.
A similar tragedy at the Hindu temple of Naina Devi in Himachal Pradesh on August 3, 2008 had killed over 150 people, mainly women and children, and injured about 230.
On March 27 that very year, at least eight devotees were crushed to death and 10 seriously injured in a stampede at a temple in the remote Karila village in Madhya Pradesh. A stampede at Mandhar Devi temple in Maharashtra claimed 340 lives in January 2005. The accident happened when some people fell down on the steps made slippery by devotees breaking coconuts.
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