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