Political rally stampede death toll rises to 16

THE death toll from a stampede at a railway station after a huge political rally in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh rose to 16 yesterday when two more people died in hospital, police said.

Thousands of people crowded the main railway station in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh state, in a rush to board trains after the rally ended yesterday. Eye witnesses said an old man fell and as some people were helping him upget back to his feet, many in the crowd surged forward, tripping over those below.

Railway workers and police had accounted for 16 bodies, a police official said. “It was simply a case of overcrowding,” said Arun Kumar, the deputy inspector-general of police in Uttar Pradesh.

But doctors said the death toll was expected to rise, as 19 people were critically ill in hospital.

Police and railway officials were still trying to help people leave Lucknow for their homes yesterday(OK).

“We are making alternative arrangements to send the rally participants back and are trying to restore train services, which remain partially disrupted because of huge and unruly crowds at the station,” Mr Kumar said.

Hundreds of thousands of members of the Bahujan Samaj Party, the state’s ruling party, attended Saturday’s rally. Most were poor farm labourers and workers.

The BSP represents the underclass. It has emerged as a political force over the past decade in Uttar Pradesh and has an alliance with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Meanwhile, five militants were killed and 13 policemen were wounded during a fierce three-hour gun battle in the southern Indian state of Karnataka early yesterday(OK), police said.

Police commandos from Karnataka and neighbouring Tamil Nadu state surrounded a house in downtown Bangalore shortly after midnight local time after receiving a tip that militants had moved in, a police official said.

Authorities called on the militants to surrender, but they opened fire instead. All five militants inside were killed in the gun battle.

Among the dead was Imam Ali, a man accused of being the mastermind behind a series of bomb blasts in the southern Indian town of Coimbatore, 230 miles south of Bangalore, in February 1998, in which at least 69 people were killed and several hundreds were injured.

Ali had escaped from police custody in Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu province, in March.

He was also accused of the 1993 bombing of the Madras office of the Hindu nationalist organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.