At least 116 people, many of them women and children, were killed in a stampede at a Hindu religious gathering in northern India on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the country’s worst such tragedies in years.
The stampede happened in a village in Hathras district in Utter Pradesh, about 200 km (125 miles) southeast of the national capital New Delhi, where authorities said thousands had gathered in sweltering late afternoon temperatures.
Police said they had launched an investigation and promised action against anyone found to be responsible, adding that the gathering may have been larger than had been permitted.
“Lapses by authorities will also be investigated and action will be taken on the basis of the report which will be available within 24 hours,” state police chief Prashant Kumar said.
Video clips recorded by news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, showed bodies piled into the back of trucks and laid out in vehicles.
Purses and bags covered in dust, were heaped up at the venue, with people sitting on their haunches sifting through them to identify their belongings.
A video on social media showed a large crowd packed into a tented area, standing and listening to devotional tunes as they waved their hands in the direction of the religious leader who sat on a stage.
It also showed some women hanging on to the bamboo poles holding up the canopy to get a better view above the heads of the large crowd.
Reuters could not immediately verify the social media images.
“There must have been about 50,000 people…at the gate on the highway, some people were going left and some people were going right, the stampede was caused in that confusion,” Suresh Chandra, a witness who was at the gathering, told local media.
Seema, a woman who travelled from a town almost 60 km away to attend the event, said she was leaving the venue when the stampede occurred. She was accompanied by three relatives, two of whom were killed.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/least-27-dead-india-stampede-ndtv-reports-2024-07-02/
