Relatives search through wreckage of temple stampede

Anxious relatives have spent the night searching through rows of bodies for family members after 145 people were killed in a stampede at a remote Hindu temple in India.

By dawn today, only 12 bodies remained unclaimed at the hospital in Anandpur Sahaib, a town near the temple where yesterday’s disaster occurred.

Volunteer workers from nearby temples helped relatives load the victims on to vehicles to be taken home for cremation.

Authorities said an investigation would be launched into the disaster and offered compensation to families of the victims.

Police said 145 people, many of them children, were killed and 37 injured after rumours of a landslide caused thousands of panicked pilgrims to stampede on the narrow path leading to the Naina Devi Temple in the foothills of the Himalayas.

An estimated 25,000 people were on the mountain at the time to celebrate Shravan Navratras, a nine-day festival honouring the Hindu goddess Shakrti.

Pilgrims running down the path collided with devotees on their way up.

With a concrete wall on one side and a precipice on the other, there was nowhere to escape and they were crushed. At one point, a guard rail broke and dozens of people fell to their deaths.

In many cases, families lost several members. Mukesh Chabba went to the temple with 11 other family members to celebrate the recent birth of his son. Only five survived.

The 31-year-old farmer lost both his parents, his wife, his two-year-old daughter, his brother and sister-in-law and their 17-year-old daughter.

“There was a lot of shouting and pushing. People fell down and could not get up. They just suffocated,” he said.

He saved his infant son by passing him to a young man who was on a ledge above the main path, he said.

Visiting the scene, Himachal Pradesh state chief minister Prem Kumar Dhuma announced an investigation into the cause of the disaster and said 100,000 rupees would be paid to the families of each victim.