Fifteen people died in a jostling on Saturday at New Delhi’s main station while the crush on pilgrims was trying to head to a huge Hindu festival in northern India, said a manager.
The goalkeeper of the chief region of the Delhi region, Atishi, who uses a name, told journalists outside a hospital in the capital that 15 people had been injured in the jostling, in addition to the 15 killed, according to Indian media.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences for the dead in a statement On social networks, adding that the authorities “helped all those who were affected by this stampede”. Ashwini Vahnaw, Minister of Railways of the country, said that an investigation had been ordered.
Before the jostling, crowds at the station had swelled because the trains for the festival, the Kumbh Mela, had been delayed, according to local media. The Ministry of Railways said it later direct additional trains To mitigate the crush.
The Kumbh Mela, which started in mid-January and will end at the end of the month, is the largest religious gathering in the world. It is expected to attract more than 400 million people over six weeks, according to government estimates.
The festival takes place every three years in one of the four cities in India. This year’s event takes place in Prayagraj, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the Rivers of Ganges and Yamuna meet. The Hindus believe that a third mythical river called Le Saraswati joins the other two in a sacred confluence. The faithful take baths in holy waters in the belief they take sins.
The event this year, which is called Maha Kumbh, or Grand Kumbh, is larger than usual because it coincides with a celestial alignment which takes place once every 144 years.
Managing the huge crowds that frequent the festival is a major challenge for the Indian government.
Last month, 30 pilgrims died in a stampede as they rushed to take their baths. In 2013, the last time Prayagraj welcomed the event, 42 people were killed in a stampede at the station there. Ten years before that, in the west city of Nasik, 39 faithful were crushed in an alley.
In 1954, during the first Kumbh Mela since the independence of India seven years earlier, hundreds of pilgrims died in a stampede.
