Prayers offered at stampede site

Chennai: Prayers were offered yesterday by people at the site of the Sunday stampede tragedy in Chennai.

Parents of schoolchildren and members of the public had organised priests to conduct "pujas' at the corporation school at MGR Nagar.

Sudha Kannan, a parent, said: "The children are shaken up and frightened after the disaster at the school. We are conducting the prayers for the kids in the school and for the dead."

G. Vijaya, a 3rd grade teacher at the school told Gulf News: "Exams are on and the children are extremely rattled by the tragedy. I wish the government will not choose schools as relief centres. They can use a stadium or a marriage hall instead. This is an educational institution and this tragedy has left a bad feeling all around."

Forty-three people died when a crowd which had gathered from the wee hours of Sunday morning to collect relief coupons at the Arignar Anna School or the Corporation Primary & High School went out of control.

The police were unable to manage the crowd as the people anxiously pushed forward to collect their coupons.

There is still no clear sequence of events that led to the tragedy. However, questions are being raised as to why the authorities did not anticipate this outcome and make arrangements.

Earlier in the week, state authorities had passed a message around the locality that 500 relief coupons would be distributed each time for two days during the weekends for nine weeks at the relief centre. The tragedy happened in the first week itself.

Vijaya recalled: "We could see the crowd was unmanageable the day before [Saturday]. What can these poor people do? They go crazy if you even have to offer saris or rice for free. And, when they were told they were getting Rs2,000 (Dh175) for free, they went berserk. They were worried that they might not get their chance."

Meanwhile, residents of K K Nagar (MGR Nagar) in south Chennai submitted letters of appeal with their addresses at the local tehsildar's office in the hope of the relief directly reaching their homes.

But the Chennai District Collector's office denied that any such order was passed by the government as yet.

Cold thrust
Himalayan winds weaken storm

A tropical storm threatening the eastern coast weakened yesterday as it was pushed away further to sea by cold winds from the Himalayas, officials said.

"The depression is moving away in a northeast-easterly direction into the sea due to thrust of cold winds from the northwest," said an official of the Cyclone Warning Centre in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.