Published On 3 Jul 2024
At least 120 people died in a crowd crush during a religious gathering with Hindu guru Bhole Baba.
Over 100 die in stampede at Hindu religious event in India
At least 121 people, the vast majority of them women, have died in a crowd crush on Tuesday in India’s Hathras district, at a religious gathering for the Hindu guru, Bhole Baba.
Here is all we know about the incident which took place on Tuesday afternoon:
A large crowd of 250,000 devotees of the religious leader Suraj Pal, also known as Bhole Baba, gathered for a satsang – prayer meeting – in a village in Hathras on Tuesday. About 80,000 of them had been allowed to enter a field serving as the main venue for the prayer meeting.
Many people had gathered in a makeshift tent where the prayer meeting was taking place, pitched atop muddy terrain.
Bhole is a Dalit, a group of people at the bottom of India’s caste system. Many of his followers are also from so-called “lower castes”, and are female or poor.
Chaos erupted when Bhole got off stage and left the tent to get into his car after the prayer meeting.
Scores of people rushed out of the tent towards his car, trampling each other, in a bid to touch his feet or the ground he had walked on, according to a police report filed afterwards.
Many people were killed in the crush, suffocating to death. Some also fell into an adjacent mud field and were crushed there.
Experts say the stampede was partly the result of poor preparations for the religious gathering by the event organisers and lack of expertise from the authorities.
Dr AP Pradeepkumar, professor of the department of Geology at the University of Kerala is co-author of the paper, Human stampedes during religious festivals: A comparative review of mass gathering emergencies in India.
He said: “The National Disaster Response Force in India is not staffed enough for controlling stampede-like situations”.
He also explained that the lack of preparedness for overcrowded religious congregations and events in India can be attributed to a lack of detailed planning and coordination, limited facilities, budget issues and even societal and religious pressure to hold religious events, among other things.
Sanjay Srivastava, a disaster management expert at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University, said: “There is far too much leeway given to private religious bodies in terms of their ability to organise public events.
“The government bodies that are responsible for public safety: police, fire brigade and medical authorities … are frequently over-ruled by politicians who seek to use religious gurus and their organisations as possible vote banks.”
According to experts, other key factors contributing to the tragedy of Tuesday were:
Overcrowding: The police had allowed 80,000 people to enter the venue for the gathering, which saw a total turnout of about 250,000, according to a police report filed after the incident. It is unclear how many among these were inside the tent.
Lack of exits: Disaster management experts have speculated that the lack of an adequate number of exits in the tent caused thousands to try to cram through one exit. “The function was held in a makeshift tent without ensuring multiple exit routes. Typically, there should be eight to 10 well-marked exits opening into open areas,” said Sanjay Srivastava, a disaster management expert who spoke to the AP. The event organised by Bhole Baba’s Sri Jagar Guru Baba organisation had been two weeks in the planning, it was reported.
Slippery mud: It was also reported that many people slipped on the muddy field in the gathering venue, contributing to the crush. Witnesses reported that it also began to rain on the already humid day, which caused people to slip and fall.
