‘Came to Mela to seek salvation, leaving with body of loved one’
PRAYAGRAJ Sushila Kumari from Bihar, who had come to attend the Maha Kumbh mela with her elder sibling Dinesh, stood outside the Motilal Nehru Medical College (MLNMC) mortuary in Prayagraj on Thursday. She was among a group of grieving relatives waiting to collect the bodies of their loved ones, who were killed in a pre-dawn stampede at the largest Hindu religious gathering.
“Wapsi mein Gangajal ghar le jana tha, bhaiya ka shav leja rahe hain (We had to take water from the Ganga while returning home, but I am taking my brother’s body instead),” Sushila said, her face swollen from frequent bouts of crying and a sleepless night. “I will never come again to Sangam and will never forget the traumatic experience.”
A few paces away, Dharmsheela Devi from Muzaffarpur (in Bihar) looked on as people carrying the remains of their relatives kept walking past her. She came to take the holy dip at the Sangam — the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers — with her neighbour and long-time friend Sheela Devi, who was among the estimated 30 people who were killed in the Wednesday stampede.
“Kya jawab denge Sheela ke parivar ko? Hum dono aaye the punya kamane, lekin mitti (body) lekar jaa rahe hain iski, (What will I answer to Sheela’s family? We both had come seeking salvation, but I am taking back her body),” Dharmsheela said.
A pre-dawn stampede on the holiest day of the Maha Kumbh on Wednesday killed at least 30 people and injured another 60 after surging crowds burst out of police barricades to rush towards a narrow strip of the riverbank, trampling bystanders. Uttar Pradesh authorities said the tragedy occurred between 1am and 2am on Wednesday as millions of devotees jostled to find a toehold before taking a dip at the holy Sangam nose on the Mauni Amavasya, considered by many as the most auspicious day of the six-week festival.
Among the deceased, five were from Uttar Pradesh, four from Karnataka, three from Bihar, two each from Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, and one each from Haryana, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Assam. The details of the remaining 10 deceased were not immediately available.
Family members of the deceased alleged that neither Maha Kumbh officials nor the authorities at the MLNMC and its associated Swaroop Rani Nehru Hospital (SRNH) were responding to their queries on the number of bodies brought to the hospitals for post-mortem examination. “I have no authority to speak. It is the administration that will reveal the count. I have to attend a meeting of the chief secretary,” MLNMC principal Dr Vatsala Mishra said.
Dr Rajiv Ranjan, in-charge of the autopsy house at SRNH, refused to divulge the count of post-mortem examinations conducted at the hospital since the stampede. However, a hospital staff, requesting anonymity, put the autopsy test count at 17 since Wednesday evening.
None of the senior officers from the mela or the police department was willing to talk to the media. HT tried reaching out to Mahakumbh Nagar district magistrate Vijay Kiran Anand and mela DIG Vaibhav Krishna, but they were unavailable.
On Wednesday evening, Krishna had said that around 90 injured people were rushed to hospitals, of whom 30 died. Of the injured, 36 were undergoing treatment at the hospital while the rest were discharged.
Around 76.4 million people congregated at the Sangam on the auspicious occasion of Mauni Amavasya, or new moon, when a rare cosmic alignment is believed to wash away the sins off any devotee taking a dip.
