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300 die in temple stampede
25/01/2005 16:26 - (SA)
Satara - More than 300 Hindu pilgrims were trampled to death and 200 wounded on Tuesday in a stampede at a religious festival in western India, police said.
"Over 300 were killed and four buses full of injured people have been sent to various local hospitals in the district of Satara," police spokesperson VN Deshmukh told AFP.
The tragedy occurred during an annual pilgrimage to the Mandhradevi temple near the town of Wai.
Deshmukh said most of the dead were women and children who had been packed into a hill-top temple and the narrow access road.
He warned the death toll was expected to go up.
Bodies were being brought down to a state-run hospital in nearby Satara town, an AFP correspondent reported.
"At about midday when pilgrims were coming out of the temple there was a stampede," senior district administrator Sharad Jadhav told AFP.
A witness said the stampede appeared to have been caused by an overhead electric cable that was believed to have fallen on some pilgrims.
"Apparently an overhead electric cable hit some people and some people got caught in it. "That created panic and people started running, some trampling on others," said Sanjay Mistry, a shopkeeper who was one of the pilgrims.
Devotees jammed into a narrow passageway leading to the temple, he said.
"People got suffocated in the crush," Mistry said. "Bodies are still lying there."
"There was a lot of chaos and cries. Many people are dead."
Mistry said there were also reports that a gas cylinder had exploded.
The religious event, held to mark the sighting of the full moon at this time of year, usually draws between 150 000 and 200 000 Hindu devotees.
The hillside temple is dedicated to the Hindu goddess Mandhradevi.
Medical teams and police were rushed to the scene of the stampede.
"Many started rioting and burning and looting makeshift shops along the route up to the temple," a policeman told AFP by telephone from Satara.
State water resources minister Ajit Pawar told reporters: "People were getting impatient standing in the queue and this led to some squabbles which turned violent."
It was the biggest stampede death toll in years at a religious event in India where sometimes millions of people mass.
Two years ago, at least 39 died when pilgrims panicked on the banks of a sacred river northeast of Bombay.
In 1954, about 800 were reported to have been killed in the northern city of Allahabad.
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