Fifteen individuals died in a stampede on Saturday at New Delhi’s most important railway station as a crush of pilgrims have been making an attempt to make their option to an enormous Hindu pageant in northern India, an official mentioned.
The caretaker chief minister of the Delhi area, Atishi, who makes use of one identify, instructed reporters exterior a hospital within the capital that 15 individuals had been injured within the stampede, along with the 15 killed, in keeping with Indian media studies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed condolences for the useless in a statement on social media, including that the authorities have been “aiding all those that have been affected by this stampede.” Ashwini Vaishnaw, the nation’s minister for railroads, said that an investigation had been ordered.
Earlier than the stampede, crowds on the railway station had swelled as a result of trains certain for the pageant, the Kumbh Mela, had been delayed, in keeping with native media studies. The Ministry of Railways mentioned it later ran extra trains to alleviate the crush.
The Kumbh Mela, which started in mid-January and can finish late this month, is the world’s largest spiritual gathering. It’s anticipated to attract greater than 400 million individuals over six weeks, in keeping with authorities estimates.
The pageant takes place each three years in one in every of 4 cities in India. This yr’s occasion is being held in Prayagraj, within the state of Uttar Pradesh, the place the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers meet. Hindus imagine {that a} third, legendary river referred to as the Saraswati joins the opposite two there in a sacred confluence. Devotees take baths within the holy waters within the perception that they wash away sins.
The occasion this yr, which is being referred to as a Maha Kumbh, or Nice Kumbh, is bigger than ordinary as a result of it coincides with a celestial alignment that takes place as soon as each 144 years.
Managing the large crowds who attend the pageant is a serious problem for the Indian authorities.
Final month, 30 pilgrims died in a stampede as they rushed to take their baths. In 2013, the final time that Prayagraj hosted the occasion, 42 individuals have been killed in a stampede on the practice station there. Ten years earlier than that, within the western metropolis of Nasik, 39 devotees have been crushed in an alley.
In 1954, in the course of the first Kumbh Mela since India’s independence seven years earlier, tons of of pilgrims died in a stampede.
