PRAYAGRAJ, INDIA, January 30, 2025 (Indian Express): It’s after 9 pm – a day of chaos since daybreak, marked by panic and grief, is winding down. Outside the morgue of the Motilal Nehru Medical College in Prayagraj, there are relatives still looking for their loved ones who have gone missing but this is now a thinning crowd. Compared to the rush throughout the day of uncertainty and despair as scores made frenetic rounds of city hospitals – including this one. Roads were blocked, key routes to the city were barricaded, most requests for information ran into walls of official silence. Indeed, until evening, there was no word on the number of dead, just official calls to keep calm, not pay heed to rumors. In this Maha Kumbh, where every detail has been framed as a poster of state efficiency, where everything was counted and is countable – from the number of special trains down to a headcount, every two hours, of those who took a dip – when it came to the dead and injured, the count took its time. [HPI note: casualties are now given as 30 dead, 60 injured.]
There were varying accounts of what had transpired. Some eyewitnesses said there was a sudden swell of the crowd on the road leading to the “Sangam Nose,” the triangular landmass considered the spot of the Sangam or where the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati merge. Some eyewitnesses claimed three of the four gates leading to this ghat were closed, leading devotees to crowd near the only one that was open. “There was a scuffle, a (wooden) barrier broke, and many people died and several were injured,” said 60-year-old Beri Devi, whose husband is among those missing. “I went to the Mela hospital first, and they sent me to the mortuary.” Others talked of chaos near Pillar No. 147, close to the site of the stampede. Jayprakash Soni, who was waiting at the mortuary for the body of his 65-year-old mother, said there was a sudden surge in the crowd. “Around 1-1:30 am, the crowd started running here and there and there was no policeman in sight. People started falling and others kept walking on them,” Soni said. His father and children escaped the crush, he said, but not his mother. “The crowd came and she got trampled.”
More at source.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/eyewitnesses-account-mahakumbh-stampede-9805225/