NEW DELHI, Nov. 10, Reuters: Thirty one people were crushed or suffocated to death when pilgrims at a Hindu shrine stampeded in darkness during an all-night procession, police said today.
It was the and fatal stampede at an Indian shrine this year. In April, 47 people were crushed to death in a mass panic at a crowded festival at Hardwar, a holy city on the river Ganges.
Police said most of the dead last night at Ayodhya in northern Uttar Pradesh state were women, but several children were killed. Thirty people were injured seven seriously.
Senior superintendent of police Karan Singh told Reuters by telephone from the nearby town Faisalabad that the stampede began when a number of pilgrims in the procession fell down a sand bank onto others crowded on a narrow, poorly lit road.
“Some of the pilgrims climbed onto a sandy hillock that slipped and collapsed under their weight. ‘They crashed down onto the others, crushing some of them and this started the panic”, Singh said.
“It was a gruesome sight,” he added, “most of the victims were suffocated but some died of head injuries.”
Thousands of pilgrim’s were performing an all night ritual, making 14 circuits of a three km (two miles) rout round the unfinished Ram Ki Pauri (footsteps of god) shrine when the disaster occurred.
Hindus are building the new shrine at Ayodhya, about 480 km (300 miles) southeast of Delhi, after a bitter dispute with India’s Moslem minority over a more famous shrine in the town.
The squabble over the ancient shrine, called Ram Janam Bhoomi (birthplace of god) by Hindus and Babri Masjid Mosque by Moslems, led to sectarian riots in north India last spring in which dozens of people were killed.
The shrine, originally the site of an ancient Hindu temple, was turned into a mosque by India’s Moghul Emperors in the 16th century. The site was closed in the 1950s to avert clashes and ordered it to reopen for Hindu worship.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 14, 1986
