What Led to the Tragic Stampede in Hathras, India?

The article discusses the devastating crowd crush that resulted in over 120 casualties during a religious gathering in India's Hathras district.

What happened in Hathras?

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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.

Who are the victims?

People walk on a field, where believers had gathered for a Hindu religious congregation following which a stampede occurred, in Hathras district of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh

Some 121 people were killed, Sandip Kumar Singh Lodhi, Uttar Pradesh (UP) state’s minister for education confirmed on Wednesday.
More than 80 others were injured and admitted to hospitals, said senior police officer Shalabh Mathur.
Among those dead are 112 women, said UP’s police chief Prashant Kumar.
Seven children have also been reported dead as a result of the incident so far, Manoj Kumar Singh, UP’s chief secretary, told local media.

Where exactly did this happen?

The crowd crush took place in a paddy field serving as the venue for the religious gathering, next to a busy highway in the Hathras district in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh (UP) state, about 200km (125 miles) southeast of the national capital, New Delhi.
Uttar Pradesh is known for its religious and cultural heritage, and is also a microcosm of India’s religious divide between Hindus and Muslims. The Ram Temple was consecrated early this year in the state’s Ayodhya city, about 500km (311 miles) southeast of Hathras.

Why did the stampede in Hathras happen?

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”.

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