Fifteen individuals died in a stampede on Saturday at New Delhi’s primary railway station as a crush of pilgrims have been making an attempt to make their technique to an enormous Hindu competition in northern India, an official stated.
The caretaker chief minister of the Delhi area, Atishi, who makes use of one identify, informed reporters exterior a hospital within the capital that 15 individuals had been injured within the stampede, along with the 15 killed, in accordance with Indian media experiences.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed condolences for the lifeless in a assertion on social media, including that the authorities have been “aiding all those that have been affected by this stampede.” Ashwini Vaishnaw, the nation’s minister for railroads, stated that an investigation had been ordered.
Earlier than the stampede, crowds on the railway station had swelled as a result of trains sure for the competition, the Kumbh Mela, had been delayed, in accordance with native media experiences. The Ministry of Railways stated it later ran further trains to alleviate the crush.
The Kumbh Mela, which started in mid-January and can finish late this month, is the world’s largest spiritual gathering. It’s anticipated to attract greater than 400 million individuals over six weeks, in accordance with authorities estimates.
The competition takes place each three years in one in every of 4 cities in India. This years’s occasion is being held in Prayagraj, within the state of Uttar Pradesh, the place the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers meet. Hindus imagine {that a} third, legendary river referred to as the Saraswati joins the opposite two there in a sacred confluence. Devotees take baths within the holy waters within the perception that they wash away sins.
The occasion this 12 months, which is being referred to as a Maha Kumbh, or Nice Kumbh, is bigger than common as a result of it coincides with a celestial alignment that takes place as soon as each 144 years.
Managing the massive crowds who attend the competition is a significant problem for the Indian authorities.
Final month, 30 pilgrims died in a stampede as they rushed to take their baths. In 2013, the final time that Prayagraj hosted the occasion, 42 individuals have been killed in a stampede on the practice station there. Ten years earlier than that, within the western metropolis of Nasik, 39 devotees have been crushed in an alley.
In 1954, throughout the first Kumbh Mela since India’s independence seven years earlier, tons of of pilgrims died in a stampede.