31 killed in stampede at India train station

An injured Indian woman who survived a stampede on a railway platform is carried away at the main railway station in Allahabad, India, on Sunday.

An injured Indian woman who survived a stampede on a railway platform is carried away at the main railway station in Allahabad, India, on Sunday.

Monday, February 11, 2013

— A stampede at a train station killed 31 people Sunday in the northern Indian town where millions of devout Hindus gathered for a religious festival, police said.

photo

AP

A woman weeps as she watches from a staircase as rescue workers tend to the bodies of those killed in a stampede on a railway platform at the main railway station in Allahabad, India, on Sunday.

The stampede, which occurred as pilgrims rushed up steps leading to one of the platforms, came at the height of the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival that occurs once every 12 years by the banks of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

Medical superintendent Dr. P. Padmakar of the main state-run hospital said Monday that at least 30 other pilgrims were injured in the crush at the main rail station in the pilgrim city of Allahabad.

Padmakar said 23 of the dead were women.

“I can’t believe God punished us this way,” said Santos Singh, one of the pilgrims at the station. “My 15-year-old son got injured. I wish police were more responsive.”

About 30 bodies covered in white sheets were visible on the train platform on Sunday evening.

News reports said the large crowds caused a section of a footbridge at the station to collapse, leading to the accident.

News reports said tens of thousands of people were at the train station at the time. Television showed large crowds pushing and jostling at the train station as police struggled to restore order.

“There was complete chaos. There was no doctor or ambulance for at least two hours after the accident,” an eyewitness told NDTV news channel.

Death and loss have long been associated with the pilgrimage at the Kumbh Mela, which takes place in other locations according to a different cycle. Deadly stampedes occurred at the Allahabad pilgrimage in 1840, 1906, 1954 and 1986. Yet still the pilgrims go. Hindu lore says that when the moon and Jupiter align, the Ganges and Yamuna are joined by a mystical river, the Saraswati, bearing the divine nectar of immortality.

According to Hindu mythology, the Kumbh Mela celebrates the victory of gods over demons in a furious battle over nectar that would give them immortality. As one of the gods fled with a pitcher of the nectar across the skies, it spilled on four Indian towns - Allahabad, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar.

Those who bathe in the conjoined waters are cleansed of their sins and given blessings that extend through several generations, Hindus say. Pilgrims make the trip not just for themselves but for their children and grandchildren.

Another draw is the presence of thousands of mystics, whom Hindus revere as spiritually powerful. But the crowds around the great procession of naked mystics in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday were frightening.

Finally, the mystics rushed toward the holy waters, some with spears, tridents and swords held high.

They plunged in, scattering marigolds and sacred ash. Other pilgrims surged forward, and the mystics had to fight their way back to shore.

Government officials estimated that 10 million pilgrims were encamped in Allahabad on Saturday night, with 20 million to 30 million expected to bathe by today.

If those figures are even close to accurate, it is as if the entire population of Texas decided to visit an area the size of Savannah, Ga., all on the same weekend.

About 80 million pilgrims - roughly the population of Germany - are expected at some point in the Kumbh’s 55-day run. By comparison, 3.1 million people visited Mecca in Saudi Arabia during last year’s annual pilgrimage, the hajj. Each successive Kumbh breaks the record for the largest gathering in human history.

Many stay in a huge tent city built on riverbanks that were underwater as recently as October. Its inhabitants have access to drinking water, public toilets, health care and consistent electricity - none of which India has been able to reliably deliver anywhere else.

The precautions and amenities are intended to prevent the stampedes and plagues that have so worried government officials. About 70,000 government employees provide security, sprinkle insecticide, sweep up excrement and spray bleach. But it was not enough to avert a tragedy on Sunday.

The stampede was set off by railway delays, shoddy infrastructure and overcrowding, several witnesses said. Train service was severely delayed during the early evening, they said, leaving more and more passengers stranded in the small station.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was shocked by the tragedy and promised to compensate the injured and the families of those killed.

A stampede seemed possible several times on Sunday as pilgrims jockeyed to be present at the one place and time where the gods are said to bestow their most precious gifts. One problem is that pilgrims often linger in the water and on the beach, preventing the next wave of people from entering. The police routinely charged onto the beach, blowing whistles and pushing people back with long bamboo poles to clear the way for more pilgrims. Again and again, young children seemed threatened by the surging crowd.

The intense jostling separated many families, and desperate searches took place all over the beach. Thousands of weeping children and older women ended up in tents for the lost. Loudspeakers announced names, hometowns and locations.

Information for this article was contributed by Gardiner Harris, Hari Kumar, Raksha Kumar, Heather Timmons and Malavika Vyawahare of The New York Times; and by Rajesh Kumar Singh and Biswajeet Banerjee of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/11/2013