LUCKNOW, India (AP) — Authorities say massive overcrowding, insufficient exits and other factors have contributed to a deadly stampede at religious festival in northern India, killing at least 121 people.
Another five people died On Wednesday morning, local official Manish Chaudhry reported that 28 people were still being treated in hospital.
The stampede took place on Tuesday afternoon in a village in Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh state, as large crowds rushed to leave a makeshift tent. It was not immediately clear what caused the panic.
Authorities are investigating what happened and have launched a search for a Hindu guru, known locally as Bhole Baba, and other organizers.
Deadly stampedes are relatively common during Indian religious festivals, where large groups of people gather in small places with poor infrastructure and few security measures.
Overcrowding, poor planning and bad weather were some of the factors contributing to the disaster.
About a quarter of a million people turned up for an event that could have held 80,000 in a tent set up in a muddy field. It is not clear how many people entered the tent.
Utter Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told reporters that a group of devotees approached the preacher to touch him as he came down from the stage, leading to chaos as volunteers struggled to intervene.
An initial police report suggested that by this point thousands of people were gathering toward the exit, where many slipped on the muddy ground, falling and being crushed by the crowd. A witness said other people fell into flooded ditches, leading to more deaths. Most of the dead were women.
The preacher’s Sri Jagar Guru Baba organization had been preparing for the event for more than two weeks.
Supporters from across the state, which is India’s largest population group with more than 200 million people, travelled to the village, where lines of parked vehicles stretched for three kilometres.
Experts said the event violated safety norms. “The function was held in a makeshift tent without multiple exit routes. Normally, there should be eight to 10 well-marked exits leading to open areas,” said Sanjay Srivastava, a disaster management expert.
Officials said it appeared there was only one small exit in the tent.
On Tuesday, hundreds of relatives gathered at local hospitals, weeping in grief as they saw the dead, placed on stretchers and covered with white sheets in the yard outside. Buses and trucks also transported dozens of victims to morgues.
Sonu Kumar was one of many locals who helped lift and move bodies after the accident. He criticised the preacher: “He sat in his car and left. And his followers here fell on each other and some of them ended up in the water.”
“The screams were so heartbreaking. We have never seen anything like this in our village,” Kumar added.
Binod Sokhna, who lost his mother, daughter and wife, cried as he left the mortuary on Wednesday.
“My son called me and said, ‘Dad, mom is gone. Come here right away. My wife is gone,'” he said, crying.
In 2013, pilgrims visiting a temple for a popular Hindu festival in the central state of Madhya Pradesh trampled each other over fears that a bridge would collapse. At least 115 people were crushed or died in the river.
In 2011, more than 100 Hindu devotees were killed during a religious festival in the southern state of Kerala.