Stampede death toll tops 250

The death toll from a stampede at a Hindu festival in western India climbed above 250 today as police searched for the pilgrims who set fire to shops along a crowded walkway, triggering the panicked crush.

About 300,000 people had gathered for a festival yesterday, in and around the hilltop Mandra Devi temple in western India near Wai, a small town 150 miles south of Bombay.

Police chief Chandrakant Kumbhar said the incident began when the temple floor became slippery from a ceremony that involved breaking coconuts in front of a deity.

Some pilgrims fell and were trampled to death by others propelled forward by the mass of people behind them trying to get into the temple to make offerings.

“When their relatives, who were still climbing the stairs, heard the news, they became angry and set fire to some shops,” Kumbhar said.

The fires were set along a packed, narrow walkway lined with tea stalls and shops leading up a hill to the temple. They set off what witnesses said was a stampede of screaming crowds fleeing in horror.

At least 256 people were killed, Subha Rao, the top district administrator, said today. Another 200 were injured.

“The crowd began pushing and I saw people falling like sacks on top of each other. I started shouting for help, but there were no policemen,” said Namdeo Yerunkar, a 45-year-old pilgrim from Bombay.

His wife, Nirmala, was among the dead.

“Nobody paid any attention. As the bodies piled, I picked up coconuts and started throwing on the mob to alert them. An electrical pole came down from the crush of the pilgrims,” he said, weeping uncontrollably.

Today, sobbing relatives were trying to identify the blackened or bruised bodies of their loved ones, which have been transported to a nearby hospital. Police have launched an investigation into the stampede, and were searching for the culprits who started the fire.

The fire had spread to other parts of the temple grounds, but firefighters had put out the flames by today, Kumbhar said.

Some blamed organisers for not preparing properly for the enormous crowds that show up every year for the pilgrimage.

Stampedes are not uncommon at major Hindu religious festivals, which can attract millions of worshippers. Authorities are often unable to cope with the huge crowds.

In August, at least 39 people were killed when Hindu pilgrims stampeded on the banks of a holy river in the town of Nasik, 110 miles north east of Bombay.

Fifty-one pilgrims died in 1999 after a rope meant to channel worshippers snapped in a landslide at a Hindu shrine in southern India, while 50 people were killed in 1986 in a stampede in the northern town of Haridwar.

In the worst accident, about 800 pilgrims died during a Hindu festival in 1954 in the northern city of Allahabad.