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Stampede at Hindu shrine near Shimla kills scores
A stampede at a Hindu festival in northern India on Sunday has killed at least 145 worshippers, including more than 30 children, police said.
- Agencies
- Published: 14:42 August 3, 2008
- People stand near bodies outside the Naina Devi temple at Bilaspur in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
- Image Credit: AP
Naina Devi: It took just one rumour to sniff out over 145 lives in a few minutes in the famous Hindu hill shrine of Naina Devi in Himachal Pradesh's Bilaspur district on Sunday.
Officials confirmed that so far 145 devotees, most of them women and children, were found killed in the stampede that followed panic created by the rumour that boulders were falling from the hill on which this shrine is located, 160 kilometers from Shimla.
Eyewitnesses told the police that the rumour was started by devotees coming after paying obeisance. Without verifying anything, the devotees who were coming down and hundreds more who were climbing up the steep gradient of the hill shrine started running wherever they could.
This led to a stampede and a huge mass of human beings tumbled down as a safety barricade gave away under their combined weight. Innocent women and children - with their hands folded as they waited to pay obeisance - became the first victims of the stampede, most of them being crushed under others.
Rush of devotees
Thousands of the devout, most of them from neighbouring Punjab - including Hindus and Sikhs - thronged the Naina Devi shrine yesterday for Sawan Navaratras, the first nine days of the Hindu month of Shravan. Being a Sunday, the rush of devotees was far greater than on weekdays.
"There was so much of chaos after the stampede that no one knew what was happening. People were running in all directions. There were cries and wails. Bodies were lying in heaps. It was worse than a war zone. Most of those killed were hapless women and children," said devotee Gautam from Punjab's Hoshiarpur district.
"Devotees ran in all directions trying to find their loved ones. Surviving children cried for their parents who seemed lost or were killed in the mayhem. Women cried as they tried to look for their children among the heaps of bodies," another devotee, Inderjit Singh, said.
"I have looked everywhere. I along with my brothers reached the site within two hours of the stampede. However, I could not trace my father," said a shattered Jasbir Singh as he looked at each of the bodies while carrying a photograph of his father and asking people if they had seen him.
"We saw each and every body but we failed to trace him," he pointed out.
Naresh Gupta from Punjab was still searching for his wife Neena. Sadly, the body of his young daughter was recovered.
Top Himachal police officials acknowledged that it was a rumour that claimed the lives. They, however, ruled out that the rumour could have been the handiwork of any terrorist outfit.
"We are trying to investigate how the rumour started. There is no possibility of any terrorist outfit being behind this. The stampede occurred due to the momentum built by the rumour," police official D.S. Manhas said.
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