At least six people have died and dozens more have been injured in a stampede at Tirupati, a town in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh, home to one of the most frequented Hindu religious sites.
The event happened on Wednesday evening as a sizable crowd assembled to pick up complimentary Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple entry tokens.
The state’s ruling Telugu Desam Party spokesperson, Prem Kumar Jain, told reporters, “Six devotees have been killed in the tragic tragedy. I want God to provide the deceased souls serenity.
Since early Wednesday, devotees from across India had begun arriving for a 10-day festival at the temple, scheduled to begin on Friday. Authorities had set up counters to distribute free tokens from Thursday for visits to the nearly 2,000-year-old temple.
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However, the crowd surged and jostled, according to the office of N Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of the state. In a post on social media platform X, Naidu said the deaths “grieved me intensely.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi also offered condolences to the families of the deceased.
“My thoughts are with those who have lost their near and dear ones,” his office said on X. Deadly accidents are unfortunately common at places of worship in India during major religious festivals, often due to poor crowd management and safety lapses. In July of last year, up to 121 people died in Hathras town of the northern Uttar Pradesh state during a Hindu religious gathering. Another 112 people died in 2016 following a massive explosion caused by a prohibited fireworks display at a temple in the southern Kerala state, during Hindu New Year celebrations.
The stampede in Tirupati comes just days before the start of the Kumbh Mela, a six-week Hindu festival of prayer and sacred bathing, anticipated to be the largest religious gathering in history, with organizers expecting up to 400 million pilgrims.
Source: Al Jazeera
