LUCKNOW: The stampede at Maha Kumbh came like a tornado – sudden, fierce, and unstoppable. In the early hours of Wednesday, as thousands of pilgrims gathered at Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj for a sacred bath, a surge of young men tore through the crowd, trampling sleeping devotees and those huddled near the ghat, recounted survivors and eyewitnesses. When the dust settled, 30 lay dead – most of them women.
It began around 1am. Barricades gave way under the force of the crowd, and in the mad rush towards the river, those who had been waiting patiently for dawn were crushed underfoot, reports Arvind Chauhan. “The crowd came like a tornado,” said Maul Devi, a survivor from eastern UP. “Most of them were young men running towards Sangam. There was no control, only mayhem. I fell twice with my sister, holding onto her hand as tightly as I could. But then the weight of the falling men broke us apart. She was crushed to death in front of my eyes.” Further down, people jostled and pushed each other for every inch after midnight. But a different warning had sparked panic.
Police, perhaps fearing overcrowding, ordered pilgrims to take their dip immediately instead of waiting for dawn. “Around midnight, we were resting a few hundred metres from Sangam. Suddenly, cops asked us to take a dip immediately,” said Laxmi, who came from Chhatrapur in MP with her family. “We were preparing when a wave of people came running towards us, and everyone was trampled. After that, police were missing. I lost my sister-in-law,” she said.
The bottleneck of movement only made things worse. Gudiya Pandey from Auraiya in UP described how a single open lane forced pilgrims into a narrow, choking space. “I was pulled from a pile of bodies by some boys who helped me and others escape,” she said.
For some, the horror went beyond loss. A family from Maharashtra spoke of how their women were caught in the stampede. “When my mother was rescued, her clothes were gone. She had just stepped out of the water when the crowd fell on her,” a survivor said. Others, lucky to escape with their lives, abandoned their pilgrimage altogether. Sanjay Kumar Mandal, who came from Dhanbad in Jharkhand with his family, said: “We were injured but managed to get up and escape. We didn’t take the dip. We’re going home.”By morning, the river still flowed, the sun still rose, and prayers still echoed. The tornado had passed, but the devastation remained.