At least 19 people died and nearly two dozen suffered injuries in a stampede during a major Hindu festival in eastern India’s West Bengal state.
The stampede in the state capital of Kolkata took place on Saturday night when a crowd near a pavilion, locally known as pandal, in Chorbagan ran for cover as it began raining during Durga Puja, an annual festival celebrating the goddess Durga. Some worshippers fell on the road, triggering the stampede, police said.
The dead included 11 women and two children.
Police registered a case of culpable homicide and detained seven people, including members of the Chorbagan pandal organising committee, who were sent by a local court into police custody for 10 days.
State chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said a special investigation team headed by a judge of the High Court would look into what caused the stampede.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi described it as a "tragic" incident and said the state government was providing help to the affected families.
Police said they were examining a video of a purported announcement from the pavilion asking the assembled people to leave because the bamboo structure was about to collapse.
"We are trying to identify who made the announcement and what prompted it," an unnamed official told the broadcaster NDTV.
"We have gathered sufficient evidence pointing to gross mismanagement by the puja organisers. There was no clear plan to manage the large number of visitors and everything was handled verbally.”
The chief minister claimed the stampede was triggered “after an announcement made by a private security agency”.
Mr Adhikari announced a compensation of Rs 2.5m (£19,700) and a state job each for the families of the dead and Rs 500,000 (£3,950) each for the injured.
The government imposed restrictions in parts of north Kolkata, prohibiting assemblies of five or more people within a specific area. The restrictions will continue until 20 October.
Authorities also advised several of Kolkata’s most heavily attended pandals to temporarily close to visitors.
Kolkata comes alive in a grand spectacle of light as thousands of elaborate, temporary pavilions rise up every year for the five-day worship of Durga. There are around 3,500 pandals dotting the city this year.
Durga Puja in Kolkata is on the UN’s list of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”.
Stampedes are rare during Durga Puja celebrations in Kolkata even though crowd crushes are relatively common at religious festivals in other parts of India.
In January last year, at least 30 people were killed as tens of thousands of Hindus rushed to bathe in a sacred river during the Maha Kumbh festival, the world’s largest religious gathering. Two years ago, a crowd crush at a Hindu religious gathering killed 121 people in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
In 2013, pilgrims attending a Hindu festival at a temple in central Madhya Pradesh state panicked amid fears that a bridge would collapse, leading to at least 115 people being crushed or drowning in the river below.
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