Dozens killed in stampede at India’s massive Maha Kumbh Mela festival

Dozens of people were killed in a pre-dawn stampede at the Maha Kumbh Mela in northern India on Jan 29, as tens of millions gathered to take a dip in sacred river waters on the most auspicious day of a six-week Hindu festival.

Bodies were still being brought to the local Moti Lal Nehru Medical College hospital morgue more than 12 hours after the tragedy at the world’s biggest gathering of humanity, though the government was yet to officially announce the casualty numbers.

Nearly 40 bodies were brought to a hospital morgue. A Reuters witness counted 39 bodies inside the morgue. Police sources said all 39 were stampede victims.

“More bodies are coming in. We have nearly 40 bodies here. We are transferring them out as well and handing over to families one by one,” one police source told Reuters.

There were 15 ambulances outside the morgue and about half a dozen people looking inside for their loved ones.

Senior police officer Vaibhav Krishna, when contacted for comment, said police could not give the official numbers because they were busy with crowd management.

Distraught relatives queued to identify those killed by the stampede, which occurred after crowds surged towards the confluence of three rivers, where immersion is considered particularly sacred.

Deadly crowd crushes are a frequent occurrence at Indian religious festivals and the Kumbh Mela, which attracts tens of millions of devotees every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj.

As pilgrims rushed to participate in a sacred day of ritual bathing, people sleeping and sitting on the ground near the rivers told AFP they were trampled by huge swells of devotees coming towards them in the darkness.

“I was sitting near a barricade, and during the pushing and shoving, the entire crowd fell on top of me, trampling me as it moved forward,” pilgrim Renu Devi, 48, told AFP.

“When the crowd surged, elderly people and women were crushed, and no one came forward to help.”

Some witnesses spoke of a huge push that caused devotees to fall on each other, while others said closure of routes to the water brought the dense crowd to a standstill and caused people to collapse due to suffocation.

“There was commotion. Everybody started pushing, pulling, climbing over one another. My mother collapsed... then my sister-in-law. People ran over them,” said Ms Jagwanti Devi, 40, as she sat in an ambulance with the bodies of her relatives.

Rescue teams carrying victims from the accident site weaved through piles of clothes, shoes and other discarded belongings.

Police were seen carrying stretchers bearing the bodies of victims draped with thick blankets.

Dozens of relatives were anxiously waiting for news outside a large tent serving as a purpose-built hospital for the festival, around 1km from the accident.

An official at Prayagraj’s SRN Hospital, where some of the injured were taken, said those who died had either suffered heart attacks or had comorbidities like diabetes.

“People came in with fractures, broken bones... Some collapsed on the spot and were brought dead,” said the official, who did not want to be named.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences to “devotees who have lost their loved ones” and said local officials were helping victims “in every possible way”, without specifying the number of dead.

‘Please cooperate’

The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar.

Jan 29 marks one of the holiest days in the festival, when saffron-clad holy men lead millions into a procession of sin-cleansing ritual bathing at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

Instead, officials were strolling the festival site with loudhailers, urging pilgrims to keep away from the disaster site and bathe at other locations.

“We humbly request all devotees do not come to the main bathing spot,” said one festival staffer, his voice crackling through his megaphone. “Please cooperate with security personnel.”

The Uttar Pradesh state government, responsible for staging the festival, said millions had already bathed in the waterways between midnight and early morning.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told reporters that medical workers were treating those seriously injured in the crush, adding that the situation was “under control”.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi blamed the disaster on poor crowd management that prioritised the comfort of prominent pilgrims.

“Mismanagement and the administration’s special focus on VIP movement instead of common devotees are responsible for this tragic incident,” he wrote on social media.

‘My family got scared’
 
Railway official Manish Kumar said numerous special train services scheduled to transport pilgrims had been halted due to massive crowding at Prayagraj.

Some devotees decided to make an early exit from the city.

“I heard the news and saw the bathing site,” attendee Sanjay Nishad told AFP .”My family got scared, so we’re leaving.”

The Kumbh Mela is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.

Organisers have likened the scale of 2025’s festival to that of a temporary country, forecasting up to 400 million pilgrims to visit before the final day on Feb 26.

Mindful of the risk of deadly crowd accidents, the police in 2025 installed hundreds of cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.

The surveillance network is fed into a sophisticated command and control centre that is meant to alert staff if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.

More than 400 people died after being trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.

Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in the northern city of Prayagraj.

 

Source: AFP/Reuters

--Agencies