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147 dead in stampede at Hindu
temple in Jodhpur
WSN Bureau
JODHPUR:
Tragedy struck
the Sun City of Rajasthan on the first day of the nine-day navaratra
festivities on Tuesday when 147 pilgrims were killed in an early
morning stampede outside the Chamunda Devi temple on a hillock
adjoining the Mehrangarh Fort. As this WSN edition went to the
press,
Jodhpur
was a city in mourning with some reports that the number of those
killed in the
Chamunda Devi
temple stampede could be even higher than the official figures.
But the temple
had reopened by Wednesday morning India time. Most of the victims
were either boys or men in the age group of 15- 40 years. Fifty-nine
people sustained injuries. Of the deceased, two persons were from
Sangli in Maharashtra, one from Punjab and the rest from Jodhpur and
adjoining areas. The bodies of most of the victims were released to
the relatives by afternoon. However, there is some skepticism about
the tally as the initial count of bodies released from some
half-a-dozen hospitals here had touched 196. The district and
divisional authorities explained the disparity in the figure to
counting some bodies twice.
The victims were
either trampled to death or had died of suffocation. Some pilgrims
standing in the men’s queue lost balance on the slopy terrain, made
slippery by the flowing coconut water on the road leading to the
hill shrine. The installation (stapana) ceremony for the navaratras
was scheduled between 6.23 a.m. and 7 .37 a.m. Around 9,000 people
had stood in queues on the 2-km mountain road. The morning chants
soon turned into shrieks of hapless victims as the commotion in the
blind alley type of lanes led to unprecedented chaos.
Eyewitnesses
talked about some pushing and shoving in the queue by some pilgrims
for an early darshan. The authorities rejected reports of any bomb
scare and denied any instance of eve-teasing led to the stampede.
This is the fourth time this year that lives have been lost during a
stampede at a religious festival in India. Crowd control at most
religious shrines in
India
is usually
rudimentary. Last month 140 pilgrims were killed in a stampede at a
mountain temple in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.
1
October 2008
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