Sea of Devotees Overwhelms World’s Biggest Religious Festival With Deadly Results
Indian officials planned for two years to host the ‘largest congregation of humanity’ safely; tragedy unfolded on busiest day
But on Wednesday, as devotees headed for the river on the most auspicious bathing day of the calendar, a tragedy unfolded. A crowd broke through barriers and crushed people sleeping on the river banks near the meeting point of the two rivers, officials in Uttar Pradesh state said.
At a press conference on Wednesday night, senior police official Vaibhav Krishna said that 30 people were killed and 60 injured after overexcited pilgrims broke through barricades.
Earlier, a police official helping the injured said that at least 40 people were killed, and that authorities were still counting the dead. The state government announced nearly $30,000 in compensation for the families of the dead.
Officials said they had worked for at least two years to prepare for the Maha Kumbh Mela, or Great Pitcher festival, to take place without incident. The Hindu pilgrimage, where people flock to take a ritual dip at the convergence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers to purify their sins, has been the scene of deadly overcrowding in the past.
This time around, they said they were prepared to handle upward of 100 million devotees in a single day.
“That many people we have already provisioned for,” said Sanjeev Singh, a senior state official at a press conference last week. “If it’s going to be less than that, then no problem so far as the capacity which has been put in place is concerned.”
The festival, which started on Jan. 13, is believed to be at least two millennia old. It attracts a tapestry of visitors—Hindu holy men, politicians, tourists—to bathe at a spot where a drop of the nectar of immortality churned by the gods is believed to have spilled from a pitcher.
Preparations included the installation of 175,000 tents, 150,000 toilets, 30 floating bridges and nearly 70,000 streetlights for the duration of the festival.
In recent years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have increasingly seized on religious events such as the Kumbh Mela as symbols of Hindu pride. Religious tourism also gives a boost to the economy.
On X, Modi called the incident “extremely sad” and extended his condolences to “the devotees who have lost their loved ones.”
At a command center in the festival, which spans an area the size of 8,000 football fields, police officers scan footage from about 1,600 security cameras installed throughout the fair, looking for trouble spots such as agitated crowds or bottlenecks, said Amit Kumar, superintendent of police in charge of the Kumbh’s Integrated Command and Control Centre, in an interview earlier this week.
Asked how to avoid overcrowding deaths, he said, “This is the holy grail.”
Police have a number of tactics, including putting up additional barricades and forming human chains to divert and slow down crowds, Kumar said. But people were continuously finding creative ways to skirt obstacles to get to the rivers’ convergence for bathing. On Monday, people broke through barricades. During an earlier big bathing day, he said, pilgrims tried to climb onto the sides of a closed bridge in order to cross.
“The crowd is one big organism,” he said. “They will find new ways, they will find new methods.”
The holiest day, or Mauni Amavasya—when religious fervor runs especially high—has long been the riskiest moment of the festival. At the Kumbh Mela in 2013, at least 36 people were killed in a stampede at the nearby railway station as they headed to the festival site on the holiest bathing day that year. A deadly crowd crush at the 1954 Kumbh Mela killed at least 500 people.
On Wednesday, about 80 to 100 million were present at the festival, Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, told reporters.
In a religious gathering, people sometimes don’t behave with the same instincts for self-preservation as in other crowd situations, said Jon Corbishley, a crowd-safety expert based in Australia.
“Many are so full of religious fervor that their own safety is the last thing on their minds,” he said. “The word ‘stampede’ was used frequently in reports of the tragedy and this implies a crowd desperate to get away from a threat, whereas the risk is from the sheer numbers trying desperately to get to an already overcrowded area.”
Eyewitnesses said there were at least two different crush incidents near the confluence of the two rivers on early Wednesday morning. In Hindu belief, a third mythical river also joins them there.
Murlidhar Pandey, 55, and his wife, Malti, arrived at the riverbank around midnight, but were soon relocated by police further down along the water. They avoided the crush that occurred around 2 a.m.
But shortly after, they moved back closer to where the rivers meet. Around 3:30 a.m., a second crush broke out after people began jumping over the barricades and running toward the river. He was kicked into the river, and he and his wife lost sight of the relatives they had traveled with.
“The cops ushered us through but there were dead bodies all around,” said Murlidhar Pandey, who was hospitalized for leg injuries.
Police had blared messages over loudspeakers to remind pilgrims that the entire riverfront area is suitable for sacred bathing, and not just the confluence point.
But loudspeakers sometimes broadcast a slightly different prerecorded message. They encouraged pilgrims to bathe at the convergence of the rivers and then head home to make way for more devotees.
Harsh Wardhan, former group managing director of G4S India, a leading security services provider, said he believed organizers had made far more robust arrangements—compared with previous years—to manage crowds. But, he added, they would have to analyze how entry and exit points to key areas and communications to the pilgrims were managed.
“People go with a lot of sentiment,” said Wardhan. “They want to go to a specific area.”
Police had cleared the beach area of sleeping pilgrims overnight, but many people came back after authorities left, said a festival adviser who requested anonymity.
“It was unexpected, and we couldn’t have anticipated it,” the person said.
The festival administration has dormitories set up for pilgrims to rent beds relatively cheaply for 12 hours, at a cost of about $2.30, but for those traveling in a family, the cost is more than they can manage. Prices also tend to go up around the holiest days, pilgrims said. Sleeping on the riverbank is free.
When people started pushing and jumping over barricades early Wednesday, it was dark and they couldn’t see the people sleeping on the ground.
Sarita Devi, 48, said she was sleeping on the beach with her husband and daughter when a surge of people “came out of nowhere” and trampled her husband. She was trying to revive him when her daughter dragged her away.
“She said, ‘He’s gone, but we have to get out of here too,’” said Devi, amid sobs.
Tripti Lahiri contributed to this article.
Write to Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com
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Appeared in the January 30, 2025, print edition as 'Indian River Ritual Turns Deadly'.