LIVE | Hathras stampede toll at 121; UP govt forms judicial commission to probe
CM Yogi Adityanath orders judicial probe into incident, says SOPs would be issued to prevent recurrence of tragedy
The death toll in the stampede that broke out a ‘satsang’ in Pulrai village of Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras went up to 121 on Wednesday (July 3). Police in an FIR filed against the organisers accused them of hiding evidence and flouting conditions with 2.5 lakh people crammed into a venue in which only 80,000 were permitted.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath met those injured in the stampede - which took place at around 3.30 pm when religious preacher Bhole Baba was leaving the venue with some accounts saying people slipped in the slush as they ran after the preacher's car.
"The chief minister held a meeting with officials in the circuit house and met the injured in district hospitals," a government official said.
A team consisting of ADG Agra and Aligarh Divisional Commissioner has been constituted to inquire into the cause of the incident. The report is likely to be submitted on Wednesday.
According to the Office of the Relief Commissioner, the number of people injured stands at 28. Only four of the 121 bodies remained to be identified.
Of the 116 who died on Tuesday, all were women, except for seven children and one man.
Where is religious preacher?
Where was Baba Narayan Hari, also known as Saakar Vishwa Hari Bhole Baba, the preacher who conducted the ‘satsang’? That was the question as he remained missing and police launched a search for him.
While the state police lodged an FIR against the organisers, his name is not in the list of accused though it is there in the complaint.
Giving a sense of what took place, the FIR alleged that the organisers hid the actual number of devotees coming to the 'satsang' while seeking permission, did not cooperate in traffic management and hid evidence after the incident.
The FIR apparently gave a clean chit to the police and administration, saying they did whatever possible from the available resources.
'Mukhya sevadar' Devprakash Madhukar and other organisers have been named in the first information report (FIR) filed at the Sikandar Rau police station late Tuesday, a senior official told PTI.
The FIR has been registered under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), 126 (2) (wrongful restraint), 223 (Disobedience to order duly promulgated by the public servant), 238 (causing disappearance of evidence), the official said.
The organisers sought permission for about 80,000 people for which police and administration made arrangements. However, over 2.5 lakh people gathered, it said.
According to the FIR, police and administration officials did everything possible and sent the injured from the available resources to hospitals but the organisers and 'sevadars' did not cooperate.
Organisers tried to hide actual number: FIR
The organisers also tried to hide the actual number of people coming to the event by hiding evidence and throwing slippers and other belongings of the devotees in nearby fields, the FIR alleged.
Asphyxia due to compression was the leading cause of death, a senior doctor in an Etah hospital said. The hospital performed four times the usual number of autopsies in a day in the aftermath of the stampede, he said.
Twenty-seven bodies were taken to the mortuary of the district hospital.
"Asphyxia due to compression was found to be the cause of death in almost all the cases," Etah's Additional Chief Medical Officer Dr Ram Mohan Tiwari told PTI. A majority of the victims were women in the 40-50 age group.
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A day after a stampede in Hathras claimed 121 lives, Uttar Pradesh minister Asim Arun on Wednesday said the state government has started work on SOPs for granting permission for large gatherings to prevent such incidents in future.
He said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed officials to prepare the standard operating procedures (SOPs) and permission for events would be granted only if the "basic, minimum" conditions for amenities are met.
Arun, the minister of state for social welfare, is part of a three-minister committee formed by Adityanath for supervising the relief measures in the aftermath of the stampede.
Explaining how the tragedy unfolded, he said, "It appears sevadars (volunteers) who were managing things inside did something wrong in terms of crowd management and that is another lesson learnt." "We should not leave it to sevadars or volunteers. They do a great job, of course, but the police and magistrates are more experienced," he said.
So, the chief minister has decided that the state will have a more detailed SOP now for any such gathering, whether it has 1,000 or one lakh people, the minister told PTI.
"It's not just this, it's about civic amenities as well, like how many toilets are required for 80,000 people or how many water tankers should be there and how many escape points should be there," Arun said.
"So, he (CM) has instructed us to make a detailed SOP and all future permissions would be granted only if these amenities are taken care of either by the organisers themselves or by a government agency," he added.
'Satsang' preacher Bhole Baba’s lawyer A P Singh said the preacher is ready to cooperate with the state administration and the police probing Tuesday's stampede. "Some anti-social elements hatched a conspiracy,” he claimed.
Retired judge of the Allahabad High Court Brijesh Kumar Srivastav will head the three-member judicial inquiry commission set up by the Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday to probe the Hathras stampede incident, according to an official statement.
The commission, tasked to complete the investigation within two months, will look into various aspects of the case including "whether this incident is an accident or a conspiracy" and the arrangements made by the district administration and police for crowd control. It will also recommend preventive steps.
The commission, formed a day after the incident following the direction of Governor Anandiben Patel, will have retired IAS officer Hemant Rao and retired IPS officer Bhavesh Kumar as its members.
It will investigate the compliance of the permission granted by the district administration and the conditions mentioned therein by the organisers of the programme, the statement said.
It will also look into various aspects of "whether this incident is an accident or a conspiracy or the possibility of any other planned criminal incident".
The commission will investigate the arrangements made by the district administration and police for crowd control and maintaining law and order during the programme and other aspects related to them and will ascertain the reasons and circumstances due to which the said incident occurred.
The commission has also been asked to give suggestions regarding preventing the recurrence of such incidents.
The stampede at a religious congregation on Tuesday left 121 people dead and 28 injured.
The Rajya Sabha in the next session will deliberate on a mechanism to prevent Hathras-like incidents, Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Wednesday.
The House stood in silence for a brief while to pay homage to the devotees who were killed in the stampede.
Referring to the tragic incident which claimed 121 lives, Dhankhar said the House should deliberate in structured manner on the matter.
"...where people gather, there needs to be a structured mechanism. I will welcome inputs from members. In the next session we will work for a mechansim," he said, adding such incidents are avoidable.
Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge suggested there should be a law for holding large gathering. He said that Maharashtra and Karnataka have laws on it.
He also demanded a statement on the Hathras stampede either from Home Minister Amit Shah or Leader of the House J P Nadda.
“I am deeply saddened to learn that many precious lives were lost in the stampede that occurred in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh. On behalf of the Government of Japan, I pray for the souls of the victims and extend my deepest condolences to the bereaved families. I would also like to express my sincere wishes for the swift recovery of the injured,” says Japanese PM Fumio Kishida in a condolence message.
Whoever this Baba (Narayan Hari Sarkar) was, he did an illegal activity, he had asked for permission for 80,000 people and gathered a crowd of more than 2 lakh. When all this happened, Baba ran away. I think an FIR should be filed against him, he should be arrested immediately and it should be found out on whose orders all this was happening. Is he a devotee or was there some plan behind this and why did he run away after so many people died? This is a matter of questioning, his followers who were servants also ran away: NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma
A public interest litigation was filed in the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday demanding a CBI inquiry into the stampede.
The PIL filed by advocate Gaurav Dwivedi said the district officials are "fully responsible" for the negligence that led to the stampede.
The district officials have all the arrangements to deal with any untoward situation and the Uttar Pradesh government is spending a lot of money on the new technologies, Dwivedi said in his petition addressed to the chief justice and other judges.
The petition has requested the high court to order a CBI inquiry into the incident to ensure a "fair probe" and demanded a direction to the state government to get the incident investigated by a special investigation team.
The petition also sought directions to the state government to suspend the Director General of Police, Divisional Commissioner of Hathras, District Magistrate of Hathras, Senior Superintendent of Police of Hathras, and SHO of Phulera police station in Hathras.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hit out at the BJP for the incident and said such tragedies keep happening, but accountability is not fixed by the government, which instead is only interested in "whitewashing" these matters.
"Three times more crowd than permitted, no administration on the spot, no crowd management arrangements, no way to escape from the scorching heat, no medical team, no ambulance after the incident, no one for help, no doctors and facilities in the hospital ... such a long list of negligence but no one is accountable." Who is responsible for the tragic incident that happened in Hathras," she asked in a post on X.
"Sometimes hundreds of people die due to a bridge collapse, sometimes due to train accidents, sometimes due to stampedes. Instead of whitewashing, it is the responsibility of the government to take action and prepare a plan to prevent such accidents," she said.
But accountability is not fixed and such accidents keep happening, she said, adding that this is a very sad situation.