Around 15 people lost their lives at the Kumbh Mela, the world’s largest religious gathering, in the early hours of Wednesday in the Indian city of Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.
The six-week festival, held every 12 years, draws millions of Hindu devotees seeking to bathe in the sacred confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
Disaster struck Wednesday when holy men led worshippers in a ritual to cleanse their sins.
According to AFP, doctors treating the survivors confirmed that 15 people were killed in the stampede while many others were injured.
An Eyewitness, Renu Devi, a 48-year-old pilgrim, told AFP that things turned chaotic after the massive crowd surged forward, knocking people to the ground.
“I was sitting near a barricade when the pushing and shoving started. The entire crowd fell on top of me, trampling me as it moved forward,” Devi said
“When the crowd surged, elderly people and women were crushed, and no one came forward to help,” she added.
Rescue teams worked to carry victims away, navigating through scattered belongings, including shoes and clothing left behind in the chaos.
Police officers were seen transporting the deceased and injured persons using stretchers, to a large tent serving as a purpose-built hospital for the festival.
However, authorities have yet to officially confirm the number of fatalities.
As the tragedy unfolded, the organizers of the festival using loudspeakers, urged pilgrims to avoid the main bathing site and instead head to alternative locations along the river.
Reacting to the incident, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his “deepest condolences” to relatives of those killed in a stampede at the festival.
“The accident that happened at the Prayagraj Maha Kumbh is extremely sad,” he wrote in a post on X.
“My deepest condolences to the devotees who have lost their loved ones,” he added.
The Kumbh Mela has a long history of tragic crowd-related accidents. In 1954, over 400 people were killed in a stampede on a single day, marking one of the deadliest incidents of its kind. During the 2013 festival, another stampede claimed 36 lives.
This year, authorities implemented extensive security measures, including hundreds of surveillance cameras and drones that feed data into a central command centre.
The system was designed to monitor crowd density and prevent disasters, but the measures have proved inadequate.
