India deadly crush blamed on huge overcrowding as death toll passes 120

About 250,000 people had gathered at the Hindu religious congregation in northern India where 121 people died in a crowd crush, triple the capacity permitted by authorities, a police report has said.

The deadly crush took place on Tuesday at a religious function known as a satsang held in a village in Hathras, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, when hundreds of thousands of devotee turned up to see Bhole Baba, a popular self-styled guru.

According to authorities, the crowd who turned up to offer prayers to the baba, whose real name is Narayan Sakar Vishwa Hari, was three times larger than the 80,000 for which authorities had granted permission.

Related: At least 116 killed in crush at Hindu gathering in northern India, say officials

According to witnesses, the crush was caused after large numbers surged forward in an effort to touch the feet of the guru and the ground he had driven away on, which is deemed holy by his devotees, while organisers used force to prevent people moving off the roads to safety.

The event was held in a large tent erected in agricultural fields around the village. Those present said it had been raining heavily in the days leading up to the satsang , causing people to slip and fall in the wet muddy fields. The death toll rose to 121 on Tuesday, with mostly women and children among the dead.

Rama Devi, 40, was among 80 people from the village of Baghauli, in the neighbouring state of Jaipur, who had travelled by bus to attend the satsang . She was accompanied by her sister-in-law, her 10-year-old nephew, Ayush, and five-year-old niece, Kavya. Both children were killed in the stampede.

Devi said she had been attending events held by the guru for the past seven years, and that all had been normal at the Hathras event until he had left the venue.

“People started pushing after Baba left. I was holding my nephew Ayush firmly but then people started falling on me, and I lost his grip,” she said. “I fell down, and people were walking over me. I somehow managed to get up and walk out of the crowd. My nephew was nowhere in sight. I was crying and calling his name, but there were so many people.”

Devi said when she regained consciousness she was in hospital, and later learned both her nephew and niece had died. She was among those who accused the police of failing to manage the event. “The police were just standing on the road and watching people die, they did not make any efforts to manage the event and control the crowd,” she said. “I feel guilty that they died because of me.”

A police report filed after the event stated that “due to the uncontrollable crowd leaving the venue, devotees sitting on the ground were crushed”.

The report added: “On the other side of the road, the crowd running in the water- and mud-filled fields was forcibly stopped by the organising committee with sticks, due to which the pressure of the crowd kept increasing and women, children and men kept getting crushed.”

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, ordered an investigation into the deaths, alleging that local organisers “tried to cover up the incident”. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, said that the victims would be “helped in every way”.

Police said cases had been registered against the organisers of the event but Baba Vishwa Hari was not named in the police report. In a statement on Wednesday, Baba Vishwa Hari expressed his condolences for the dead and said the stampede was caused by “some anti-social elements”.

The guru, who is reported to previously have been a police officer before he became a self-styled spiritual leader, has regularly held such gatherings in local villages for years. According to Kuldeep Kumar, 30, who runs a shop in the village, three people had died in a stampede 12 years ago at a similar event held by the guru.

Among those attending Tuesday’s satsang was Amit Kumar, 22, a farmer from the nearby village of Mughal Garhi. He described how a large tent had been set up for the arrival of the guru, which was “suffocating” even before his arrival around midday, where he gave only a brief sermon to the huge crowd.

“As soon as his cars were leaving the venue, people started running towards the highway to collect the dirt where his car had been,” said Kumar. “It was so crowded that people could not save themselves and kept falling on each other. I was caught in a similar situation and literally walked over dozens of bodies. Had I tried to help anyone that time, I would not have been speaking to you this time.”

He added: “There was so much pressure from the crowd, and it was so packed that I felt my chest burst. I don’t know how I managed to get out of this crowd and save myself. I am still shaking, thinking of how crowded it was.”

Kumar said he had returned to the scene two hours later to help with the rescue effort. “There were bodies stuck in the mud,” he said. “It was very difficult to get them out. Then ambulances also arrived after a while, and it took us hours to get all the bodies out of the fields.”

Families of the dead and missing remained gathered at the hospital and morgue in Hathras on Wednesday, desperate for answers and trying to find the bodies of their loved ones.

Among them was Saurab Kumar, 30, from Etah in Uttar Pradesh, who had attended the event with 15 relatives. He said that as the crush began, he ran to save himself but afterwards he could not find his mother. Kumar returned to the muddy fields where dozens of dead bodies lay in the mud, but could not identify her.

Late on Tuesday night, one of his relatives discovered her body in the morgue. “There was no crowd control management and no medical staff to deal with this crisis,” he said. “It is the government that is responsible for the deaths of my mother and so many others.”

Numerous incidents of crowd crushes at religious events and pilgrimages have taken place in India in recent years. Rajesh Kumar Jha, a member of parliament, questioned why fatalities kept occurring, stating that “people will keep on dying” if authorities did not take safety protocols seriously enough.

• This article was amended on 3 July 2024. Authorities had granted permission for a capacity of 80,000 at the satsang , not 50,000 as an earlier version reported.