NEW DELHI (AP) — At least one person was killed and many others were rushed to hospitals after a sudden crowd surge struck a major Hindu religious festival in India’s eastern Odisha state on Thursday, according to a news agency report.
The chaos unfolded in the coastal city of Puri, where tens of thousands of worshippers had gathered for the annual Rath Yatra chariot festival, as reported by the Press Trust of India.
Regarded as one of the oldest and largest religious processions on the planet, the centuries-old celebration centers on the removal of Hindu deity idols from the Jagannath Temple, which are then paraded through city streets atop elaborately decorated chariots.
Footage captured at the scene showed injured festival-goers being carried away for medical treatment, while shoes, bags, and other personal items lay scattered across the ground in the wake of the surge.
In a social media statement, Odisha police reported that emergency response teams administered first aid and oxygen to 33 individuals before transporting them to hospitals in the surrounding area.
This is not the first time tragedy has struck the festival. Last year, three people lost their lives and more than a dozen were hospitalized following a similar crowd surge during the same event.
Deadly crowd crushes are not uncommon at Indian religious festivals, where enormous gatherings — sometimes numbering in the millions — converge in tight spaces with limited safety infrastructure or crowd management. Just last January, at least 30 people died when tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims rushed to bathe in a sacred river during the Maha Kumbh festival, recognized as the world’s largest religious gathering.
One of the worst such disasters on record occurred in 2013, when pilgrims at a Hindu temple festival in the central state of Madhya Pradesh panicked after rumors spread that a nearby bridge was about to collapse. At least 115 people perished — either crushed in the stampede or drowned in the river below.
