Stampede kills 167 at Hindu temple in India

AT LEAST 167 people were killed and scores injured yesterday in a frenzied stampede at a Hindu temple in western India, police said.

The disaster occurred as more than 25,000 worshippers clambered to reach the 15th-century Chamunda Devi temple in the hilltop Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur in the state of Rajasthan.

The stampede came at the start of Navaratri, a nine-day festival that is one of the most important in the Hindu calendar and when crowds are particularly big.

Officials said the stampede appeared to have started when a wall along the narrow path leading up to the temple collapsed, killing several people and sparking widespread panic.

People were trampled and suffocated to death.

“The stampede began when people lost their footing and set off a chain reaction,” Rajasthan’s home secretary SN Thanvi said.

Officials said many of the injured were seriously hurt. After the stampede, devotees carried limp bodies to police vehicles, while others desperately tried to resuscitate victims.

Temple stampedes are common during religious festivities in India, where crowd control is often rudimentary or non-existent.

“I was to join my friend this morning to offer prayers but I was a little late,” recalled university student Manish. “When I arrived, I saw chaos, people rushing around the place. I looked for my friend and after a while found him. He was unconscious but without serious injuries.”

He said the path leading up to the temple shrine was narrow with many people trying to get in at the time of the incident, as the auspicious moment for offering prayers was about to begin.

Outside the Mathura Das Mathur hospital, relatives scrambled to look through lists of names of those admitted to the emergency room, witnesses said.

Scenes inside were equally chaotic, with doctors struggling to cope with the number of injured.

“We were standing in line to get inside the temple when suddenly there was a commotion,” said factory worker Ajay, who was brought to hospital unconscious.

“I was pushed onto the ground. Before I could get up people were running over me, stamping over me. I woke up here,” he said, pointing to his hospital bed.