Two women and a man were killed in a pre-dawn stampede near the chariots of the Jagannath temple deities on Sunday, when a crush of devotees waiting for the darshan was sent running helter-skelter by the sudden arrival of two trucks.
The disaster, which also left over 50 people injured, occurred outside Puri’s Gundicha temple where the chariots had arrived on Saturday afternoon, pulled by devotees from the Jagannath temple as part of the Ratha Yatra.
The dead have been identified as Premakanta Mohanty, 80, Basanti Sahoo, 36, and Prabhati Das, 42.
Many devotees alleged mismanagement, saying there were not enough police or officials to manage the surging crowd of 30,000 people that, confined and suffocating in a jampacked 100m by 50m space, grew restless for the darshan.
Chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi has sought “forgiveness” for the tragedy and ordered an investigation by the development commissioner.
The state government has transferred the Puri collector and superintendent of police, and suspended the deputy commissioner of police and the commandant in charge of the chariots.
This correspondent, present at the Gundicha temple during the 4.15am stampede, saw the crowd of devotees going wild after the cloths (pahadas) covering the faces of the three deities on the three chariots were removed around 3.55am.
As everyone rushed forward for a glimpse of the deities, two trucks carrying palm wood logs (charmal), to be placed against the pedestals to bring the idols down, drove into the area without warning.
This worsened the chaos, with people running pell-mell to save themselves from being run over.
“My wife died in the melee, the police did not help — they did not offer even a drop of water (while she was still alive after the stampede),” Basanti Sahoo’s husband alleged.
A PTI report quoted a survivor as saying an ambulance was parked about a kilometre away, and the injured had to be carried to the vehicle.
Of the 50-odd injured, all of whom were rushed to the Puri district hospital, six are critical, the agency added, quoting hospital sources.
The three deities from the Jagannath temple are pulled by devotees to the Gundicha temple, 2.5km away along the Grand Road, and back every year.
The Ratha Yatra began on Friday but, as in the past two years, the overcrowding and chaos meant the journey could not be completed in a day. Some 600 people got injured or fell sick in the suffocating heat during the journey, which ended on Saturday afternoon.
The crowd near the Gundicha temple began swelling from midnight, with thousands from across Odisha and elsewhere waiting eagerly for the idols’ covers to be removed.
A darshan of the deities atop the chariots before they are taken inside the Gundicha temple in ceremonial processions is considered particularly auspicious.
“The crowd was huge but there was no police arrangement inside the barricades to guide the devotees or to save them in the event of a stampede,” said Rashmi Prava Mohanty of Bhubaneswar, who had come with her son, nephew and husband.
“The traffic arrangements were equally poor, with no one to tell people where to enter and how to exit.”
The administration had created narrow entry points with barricades, hoping to regulate the stream of devotees and ensure an orderly darshan, but this seemed to have boomeranged in the absence of enough police.
“The three chariots were parked side by side. More than 30,000 people had gathered in a 50m by 100m area and there was only a narrow passage near the chariots for them to move,” said Saroj Mishra, another devotee who had arrived from Bhubaneswar.
“This caused acute discomfort and caused many devotees to feel asphyxiated.”
The government has announced ₹25 lakh each for the families of the dead.
Former chief minister Naveen Patnaik tweeted that there were serious lapses in the management of the event.
“While I refrain from accusing the government of criminal negligence, their blatant callousness has undeniably contributed to this tragedy,” Naveen said.
The scion of the erstwhile royal family of Puri, Gajapati Dibya Singh Deb, expressed grief.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said: “This tragedy is a serious warning — security arrangements and crowd management for such big events should be taken seriously and must be reviewed.”
Khurda collector Chanchal Rana has been appointed the new collector of Puri, and Pinak Mishra, special task force DIG, has taken charge as SP.
Higher education secretary Aravind Agrawal has been given the overall charge of supervising the Ratha Yatra.
Once taken into the Gundicha temple on Sunday, the deities will remain there till the return journey — the Bahuda Yatra — to the Jagannath temple on July 5. They will be taken inside the temple on July 8, marking the end of this year’s Ratha Yatra festival.