Fifteen people died at a stampede on Saturday at the New Delhi Central Railway Station, as a pilgrims were trying to make their way at a huge Hindu festival in northern India, an official said.
Delhi’s lead minister, Atishi, who is using a name, told reporters outside a hospital in the capital that 15 people were injured in Stampede, except for the 15 killed, according to Indian media reports.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed condolences to the dead in a social media statement, adding that the authorities “helped all those who were influenced by this stampede”. Ashwini Vaishnaw, the country’s railway minister, said he had ordered an investigation.
Prior to Stampede, crowds at the train station were swollen because the trains intended for the festival, Kumbh Mela, had been delayed, according to local media reports. The Ministry of Railway said it later ran extra trains to relieve the crash.
Kumbh Mela, which began in mid -January and will end late this month, is the largest religious concentration in the world. It is expected to raise more than 400 million people over six weeks, according to government estimates.
The festival takes place every three years in one of the four cities of India. This year’s event takes place at Prayagraj, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the rivers Ganges and Yamuna meet. Hindus believe that a third, mythical river called Saraswati unites the other two there in a sacred serial. The devotes take baths in the sacred waters with the belief that they are rinsing the sins.
This year’s event, called Maha Kumbh, or Great Kumbh, is greater than usual because it coincides with a heavenly alignment that takes place once every 144 years.
Managing the huge crowd attending the festival is a major challenge for the Indian government.
Last month, 30 pilgrims died in a massacre as they rushed to take their baths. In 2013, the last time Prayagraj hosted the event, 42 people were killed in a stampede at the train station there. Ten years ago, in the western town of Nasik, 39 devotees crashed into a alley.
In 1954, during the first Kumbh Mela from India’s independence seven years earlier, hundreds of pilgrims died in a stampede.
