India’s tragic history of deadly stampedes during religious gatherings

The bodies of victims of a stampede lie on a bridge across the Sindh River in Datia district in Madhya Pradesh state, India. Scores of people were killed Sunday in a stampede by masses of Hindu worshippers crossing the bridge to the remote Ratangarh village temple to honour the Hindu mother goddess Durga on the last day of the popular 10-day Navaratra festival. October 13, 2013. (The Associated Press)

At least 121 people, most of them women and children, died in a stampede at a Hindu religious congregation in India‍‍`s northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the worst such tragedies in recent years, reports Reuters.

A police document said around 250,000 people, more than triple the capacity permitted by authorities, had gathered in a village in Hathras district, about 200 km (125 miles) southeast of the national capital New Delhi, when the stampede occurred.

JANUARY 2022: At least 12 people died and more were injured in a stampede at the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu and Kashmir, after a huge crowd of devotees tried to go into the shrine though its narrow entrance.

OCTOBER 2013: Around 115 people were killed and more than a hundred injured after a stampede at the Ratangarh temple in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh after more than 150,000 people gathered to celebrate Navratri.

FEBRUARY, 2013: At least 36 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a stampede on the busiest day of the Kumbh Mela, a gathering where more than 100 million pilgrims gather over a period of two months, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Of the dead, 27 were women, including an eight-year-old girl.

JANUARY 2011: More than 100 people are killed in a stampede at the hilltop Sabarimala Hindu shrine in Kerala state in southern India.

MARCH 2010: At least 63 people, more than half of them children, were killed in a stampede triggered by a massive rush for free food and clothes at a Hindu temple in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, media reported.

SEPTEMBER 2008: A total of 250 people were trampled to death at the Chamundagar temple in the northern desert state of Rajasthan as pilgrims gathered to celebrate Navratri, a nine-day festival that celebrates the Goddess Durga.

AUGUST 2008: At the mountaintop Naina Devi temple in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, about 145 Hindu pilgrims died after rumours of a landslide triggered a stampede.

JANUARY 2005: More than 265 Hindu devotees were killed and hundreds more injured after a stampede at the Mandhardevi temple in Wai town in the western state of Maharashtra. The stampede was caused by slippery steps leading up to the temple, media reported at the time.

AUGUST 2003: At least 40 pilgrims die and 125 are injured when devotees waiting to bathe topple over a flimsy fence, triggering a stampede at the Kumbh Mela bathing festival in Nasik in Maharashtra.