UJJAIN: Atleast’60 people were trampled or suffocated to death and scores injured in stampedes in India early July 15th when Hindu worshipers gathered to celebrate a traditionally auspicious new moon festival Gaiety turned to nightmare when 39 people, including five children, were killed and 35 injured in the central town of Ujjain as a crowd of devotees tumbled Over each other down a narrow staircase inside a temple complex, Hospital officials said most of the victims died of suffocation. A few were gored by bamboo and steel wires as they were thrown against a temporary barricade which had been erected around the main area of worship inside the temple.
Twenty one others, including 18 women and one child, were killed and 10 seriously injured when devotees rushed to bathe in the River Ganges at the holy northern town of Hardwar. Eyewitnesses in both towns blamed the authorities for the accident, saying adequate precautions to prevent crowd surges had not been taken. Judicial enquiries were launched into both incidents.
Officials said dozens of the roughly 200,000 devotees at Ujjain were trampled underfoot as they raced down marble steps to a temple at least 32 feet below ground level. Doctors in Ujjain Said most of the injured, of whom seven were in a critical condition, suffered bone fractures and chest compressions. Some of the dead had broken skulls too,” said one.
Eyewitnesses said thousands of devotees, mostly farmers, had gathered Sunday night to ensure early entry into the temple.
Some devotees carried on with their rituals until evening, but most of Ujjain’s residents were in a deep state of shock. In the second incident, at Hardwar, the 21 victims were crushed to death in a Stampede on an overcrowded bridge, which was being used by over two million devotees who had gathered to take a dip in the holy Ganges. India has seen several stampedes in the past decade which have killed around 1,000 people.
At least 400 people, mostly children, were killed and up to 200 injured in a blaze and stampede at a Dec. 23, 1995 school prize giving in Dabwali, in the northern state of Haryana, when a large tent caught fire and collapsed on top of the audience,.
Elsewhere in India and Bangladesh, about 135 people were feared killed and some 1.9 million made homeless by floods and landslides after four days of torrential monsoon rains, local officials said. Officials in the north eastern state of Assam, home to 22.4 million people, said heavy annual flooding had claimed at least 20 lives and left a staggering 1. 7 million people without homes. It’s still raining,” a resident in the state’s capital, Guwahati, said by telephone. It’s very bad now and it’s going to continue.” Flooding is an annual event for people living in the northeast of India. Which is said to have the highest rainfall in the world due to a rainy season which lasts until September? Roughly 100 million of the country’s 930 million people live in the affected areas.
Landslides in the West Bengal district of Darjeeling killed 47 people during the weekend and another 20 died in floods in the State’s districts of Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri, many of them as they tried to flee across swollen rivers in boats. Eight houses in the nearby district of Kalimpong were engulfed by a landslide, and authorities feared a further 40 [v s had been lost.
State officials, who estimated more than six cm (2.4 inches) of rain had fanen in the three days since Thursday, said troops had been called in to help with rescue operations and clear the national highway. The Himalayan foothill state of Sikkim, also hit by heavy rains, was cut off from the rest of India on Monday after landslides blocked roads. Heavy rains also caused widespread damage in northern Bangladesh where nine people were drowned, police said.
An estimated 50,000 hectares (124.000 acres) of rice paddy were destroyed or damaged, nearly 100 km (60 miles) of roads were submerged and up to 100,000 people were marooned in five districts. Hundreds of families huddled on their rooftops on Monday as rivers, many of which had already burst their banks, continued to rise.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 17, 1996
