NEW DELHI: Fifteen people died during a stampede at a railway station in India’s capital on Saturday when surging crowds scrambled to catch trains to the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj.

The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar. The festival, held after every 12 years, has a history of crowd-related disasters — including one last month when 30 people died in another stampede at the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.

The rush at the train station in New Delhi appeared to break out at around 8pm as crowds struggled to board trains for the ongoing event, which will end on Feb 26.

“I can confirm 15 deaths at the hospital. They don’t have any open injury. Most (likely died from) hypoxia or maybe some blunt injury, but that would only be confirmed after an autopsy,” Dr Ritu Saxena, deputy medical superintendent of Lok Nayak Hospital, in New Delhi, said.

“There are also 11 others who are injured. Most of them are stable and have orthopaedic injuries,” she said. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said he was “extremely pained by the loss of lives due to stampede” at the New Delhi railway station.

“In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. Praying for the speedy recovery of the injured,” Singh said in a social media post.

The governor of the capital, Vinai Kumar Saxena, said disaster management personnel had been told to deploy and “all hospitals are in readiness to address related exigencies”.

Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said additional special trains were being run from New Delhi to clear the rush of devotees.

More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally. Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2025