30 000 stampede for jobs in India
2010-03-08 18:29
Mumbai – One man died in a stampede at a police recruitment centre in the Indian city of Mumbai on Monday as 30 000 candidates rushed to lodge job application forms, a senior officer said.
The crowd of hopefuls had gathered outside the centre in the north of the city to try to secure one of 3 300 vacancies for the post of constable.
"A group of applicants was waiting since last night," Kiran Choudhary, 24, told reporters. "Suddenly, those standing behind started pushing and surged forward to submit the forms.
"Everyone started jumping at each other which created panic and applicants in the front got hurt," he said.
Police commissioner Amitabh Gupta told AFP that one person was killed and ten injured.
Recruit new police
Last August, the federal government said states needed to recruit 150 000 low-ranking police officers across the country by this March to boost a depleted and overstretched force.
Many would-be recruits came from Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is capital.
"What will I do now? Our entire family was depending on him," the father of 22-year-old Ramesh Gopinath, who was crushed to death in the stampede, was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.
Police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh last week blamed lax safety for the deaths of 63 people – all of them women and children – in a stampede outside a Hindu temple.
Stampedes at public events in India are common as large numbers of people pack into congested areas. Panic can spread quickly and, with few safety regulations in place, the result is often lethal.