Around 15 individuals are feared to have lost their lives in a crowd crush at India's Kumbh Mela religious festival

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Key Points

The Maha Kumbh Mela or Great Pitcher Festival is the world’s largest religious gathering.
Organisers have likened this year’s festival to a temporary country, expecting up to 400 million pilgrims.
A barrier broke during a holy bath in the city of Prayagraj injuring several devotees.

At least 15 people have been killed in a crowd crush at the world’s largest religious gathering in India, according to a doctor at the festival.

The incident took place on Wednesday during the Hindu religious festival, the Kumbh Mela, in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, local media reported.

A barrier broke during a holy bath in the city of Prayagraj, injuring several devotees, a Press Trust of India (PTI) report said.

A doctor in Prayagraj city, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least 15 people had died and others were being treated for injuries.

A state government official, Akanksha Rana, told the PTI: “Some people have got injured and have been hospitalised after a barrier broke at the Sangam. We are yet to have the exact count of those injured.”

A large crowd gathered in front of a river, with narrow bridges crowded on either side.

Hindu devotees gather ahead of the second sacred bathing ritual, or ‘shahi snan’, during the Kumbh Mela festival. Source: AAP / Prabhat Kumar Verma/EPA

Malti Pandey, 42, a pilgrim, said he was on his way to bathe in the river along a barricaded walking route when the incident took place.

“Suddenly, a crowd started pushing, and many people were crushed,” he said.

Rescue teams were working with pilgrims to carry victims away from the site of the accident.

The Maha Kumbh Mela, or Great Pitcher Festival, is the world’s largest religious gathering and is held every 12 years.

The six-week festival is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and millions of people were expected to be present on Wednesday for a sacred day of ritual bathing at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

Hindus believe that those who immerse themselves in the waters cleanse themselves of sin, breaking free from the cycle of rebirth and ultimately attaining salvation.

The Kumbh Mela is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.

Organisers have compared the scale of this year’s festival to that of a temporary country, forecasting up to 400 million pilgrims to visit before the final day on 26 February — more than the combined population of the United States and Canada.

Around 150,000 toilets have been built along with community kitchens that can each feed up to 50,000 people at a time.

Mela authorities and police have set up a network of ‘Lost and Found’ centres as well as a special Kumbh phone app to help lost pilgrims reunite with their families.

Mindful of the risk of deadly crowd accidents, police have installed hundreds of cameras at the festival site and along the roads leading to the encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.

The surveillance network is fed into a sophisticated command and control centre that is meant to alert staff if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.

A timeline infographic of major crowd crush incidents in India over the past years.

In 1954, between 350 and 800 people died in Prayagraj — reportedly one of India’s worst crowd-crush incidents. Source: SBS News

Deadly crowd crushes are a recurring issue of Indian religious festivals, and the Kumbh Mela, with its overwhelming crowd of devotees, has a history of such tragedies. The latest incident adds to the festival’s grim record of crowd-related fatalities.

More than 400 people died after being trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.

Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.