Stampede at religious gathering in India leaves at least 77 people dead

 

New Delhi — At least 77 people were killed in a stampede at a religious gathering in central India's Uttar Pradesh state Tuesday, authorities said. Multiple Indian news reports said the death toll could be over 100, with most of the victims reportedly women, as authorities raced to collate the number of casualties at different hospitals in the region.

The stampede occurred during a "satsang," a prayer meeting hosted by a Hindu guru, in the village of Rati Bhanpur in the state's Hathras area. Thousands of the guru's devotees showed up to listen to his address, crowding under tents to avoid the harsh sun, before there was a panic and people started running.

Hathras District Magistrate Ashish Kumar said the local community health center had confirmed between 50 and 60 deaths among residents of the district alone. Officials in the neighboring Etah district confirmed the deaths of an additional 27 people... 

Stampede at religious gathering in India leaves at least 77 people dead - CBS News

Dia de los Muertos by Glen Brown

Chalma, Mexico – At least 41 worshippers
were suffocated or crushed to death  
when a tightly packed crowd began pushing
and shoving at a church famed for a religious icon
believed to have miraculous powers.
Thirteen of the victims were children.
                                                --from a news story
 
They came from Guadalupe and Guasave
and from villages in the south
with prayer on their tongues
and dead Jesus around their necks;
across nameless plains and mountains
in borrowed automobiles full of parcels
of hope and faith, their lives pawned
for one more pilgrimage.
 
Little children in their Sunday suits
and starched, white cotton dresses;
young, barefooted women
in embroidered bodices and lacy headdresses;
their mustachioed men in huaraches and doeskin;
and the old: tortilla-breasted and stern-faced
in dark shawls, fingering beads, pressed together.
Like a pile of sapodilla seeds,
they gathered at the sanctuary
with garlands of marigolds and chrysanthemum,
hoping for a cure.
 
There was a loud perfume of bougainvillea
rising among the festoons,
the Virgin enticing them to come closer,
and then an avalanche of bodies –
the terrible stomping
and crushing of skulls and bones,
two-and-a-half tons of trust
beneath the shrine, one afternoon
under the hemorrhaging, Mexican sun,
the red sky burning in their eyes.
 

(1990)