About 250,000 people had gathered at the Hindu religious congregation in northern India where 121 people died in a crowd crush, triple the capacity permitted by authorities, a police report has said.
The deadly crush took place at a religious function known as a satsang held in a village in Hathras, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, on Tuesday when hundreds of thousands of devotee turned up to see Bhole Baba, a popular self-styled guru.
According to authorities, the scale of the crowd who turned up to offer prayers to the baba, whose real name is Narayan Sakar Vishwa Hari, was three times larger than the 80,000 authorities had granted permission for.
According to the police report, the crush was caused after large numbers surged forward in an effort to touch the feet of the guru and the ground that he had stood on, while organisers used force to prevent people moving off the roads to safety.
According to witnesses, it had also begun raining, causing people to slip and fall in the crush, with mostly women and children among the dead. The death toll rose to 121 on Tuesday.
“Due to the uncontrollable crowd leaving the venue, devotees sitting on the ground were crushed,” said the police report.
“On the other side of the road, the crowd running in the water and mud-filled fields was forcibly stopped by the organising committee with sticks, due to which the pressure of the crowd kept increasing and women, children, and men kept getting crushed.”
The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, ordered an investigation into the deaths and the prime minister, Narendra Modi, said that the victims would be “helped in every way”.
Police said cases had been registered against the organisers of the event and that Baba Vishwa Hari was expected to be arrested later on Wednesday, but police were still trying to ascertain his whereabouts.
Neither the organisers nor the guru have made a statement about the deadly crush.
The guru, who is reported to previously have been a police officer before he became a self-styled spiritual leader, has regularly held such gatherings in local villages for years.
Among those attending the event was Amit Kumar, 22, a farmer from the local village of Mughal Garhi. He described how a large tent had been set up for the arrival of the guru, which was “suffocating” even before his arrival around midday, where he gave only a brief sermon to the huge crowd.
“As soon as his cars were leaving the venue, people started running towards the highway to collect the dirt where his car had been,” said Kumar. “It was so crowded that people could not save themselves and kept falling on each other. I was caught in a similar situation and literally walked over dozens of bodies. Had I tried to help anyone that time, I would not have been speaking to you this time.”
He added: “There was so much pressure from the crowd, and it was so packed that I felt my chest burst. I don’t know how I managed to get out of this crowd and save myself. I am still shaking, thinking of how crowded it was.”
Kumar said he had returned to the scene two hours later to help with the rescue effort. “There were bodies stuck in the mud,” he said. “It was very difficult to get them out. Then ambulances also arrived after a while, and it took us hours to get all the bodies out of the fields.”
Families of the dead and missing remained gathered at the hospital and morgue in Hathras on Wednesday, desperate for answers and trying to find the bodies of their loved ones.
Numerous incidents of crowd crushes at religious events and pilgrimages have taken place in India in recent years. Rajesh Kumar Jha, a member of parliament, questioned why fatalities kept occurring, stating that “people will keep on dying” if authorities do not take safety protocols seriously enough.
