AT least 130 people were killed last night and more than 200 injured when pilgrims stampeded at a Hindu festival in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

The death toll at the Naina Devi temple in the Bilaspur district was expected to rise. Most of the victims died of suffocation.

Thirty of the dead were children caught in the melee of the tens of thousands of pilgrims who had gathered at a temple to celebrate Navratra, a festival dedicated to the main Hindu goddesses.

Hospitals were crammed with victims as state authorities rushed in medical reinforcements.

Police said almost 50,000 worshippers were expected daily during the week-long festival, but many more had turned up yesterday, leading to a rush at the pilgrimage centre in the foothills of the Himalayas.

The stampede occurred after a railing broke at the narrow, steep staircase leading to the temple as worshippers became alarmed about rumours of a landslide after stones were seen rolling down a nearby hilltop.

“The commotion caused by the rumours apparently led to the stampede, which took place as a sudden rush was caused by people returning from the temple,” a local magistrate said.

“The stampede happened after a railing collapsed. People started running here and there.”

Many of the dead were from the neighbouring state of Punjab, and additional police from the state were requested to help at the accident scene.

Television pictures showed the temple was packed with hundreds of devotees gathered around a colourful float of Hindu deities.

“A lot of people were confined in a small area,” district deputy commissioner CP Verma said.

A temple official said devotees with minor injuries from the crush had been sent to a hospital in nearby Dawar Chowk, while those with serious injuries were being sent to hospitals in Punjab’s Anandpur Sahib.

Stampedes are a regular occurrence in India, especially when tens of thousands of worshippers gather at temples on days regarded as auspicious.

Approach roads to the temples are invariably narrow and in poor condition, making scenes such as those witnessed at Bilaspur last night almost inevitable.

Six people died in a similar crush at a popular Hindu festival in in July in the eastern state of Orissa, where about a million people had gathered in the town of Puri for the annual celebrations of the event.

In March, nine people were killed and many more injured at a religious gathering in central India, when a railing broke at the temple premises, leading to a stampede among the 100,000 devotees there.

The stampede at Bilaspur came as Indian soldiers were patrolling the streets in two districts of Kashmir after protesters clashed with police in a row over the transfer of land in the Muslim region to Hindus.

The army was deployed after more than two dozen people were injured as angry demonstrators attacked government buildings and torched a police post late on Friday in Jammu, the Hindu-majority winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir state.

Protesters and the local media said two people were killed in police firing, but police attributed the deaths to “gang rivalry”.

“The army conducted a flag march in sensitive areas of Jammu city and Samba town and made announcements from public address systems asking people to stay indoors,” defence spokesman SD Goswami said.

The Kashmir Government’s decision to provide land to a Hindu trust had sparked more than a week of rioting by furious Muslims, leaving six dead and hundreds injured.

The Government went back on the decision to allocate land to the Hindu pilgrims, sparking the current protests in Hindu areas of the state.

The state Government collapsed last month after its main coalition ally withdrew support over the issue.

Source by Ahmedabadnews.com