Thick slabs of ice lined the front of Vinod’s home in Sokhana village of Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, making his two storey brick tenement unusually chilly for an overcast afternoon in July. On those blocks of ice had lain, just a few hours ago, the inert, mangled bodies of his septuagenarian mother Jaywati, his 42-year-old wife Raj Kumari, and his daughter Bhoomi, who was just 9-year-old. The three were among the 121 people officially killed in a stampede that broke out during a satsang (religious congregation) held just a few kilometres from the village. “I lost everything, my whole family,” a hysteric Vinod wept after cremating three generations of his family’s women. “And all this for what? Who is responsible?” he asked. In Hathras, no one has the answer.
On July 2, a crowd of reportedly 2.5 lakh strong devotees turned up at the little roadside village of Phulrai on the outskirts of Hathras district to listen to the sermons of Baba Narayan Hari alias Saakar Vishwa Hari alias ‘Bhole Baba’. A former policeman who became a religious preacher and gained a following, especially in western Uttar Pradesh, the ‘godman’ at the centre of the tragedy remains conspicuous. On Wednesday evening, the Baba alleged in a statement that “anti-social” elements were behind the stampede.
Victims’ kin like Vinod and other survivors and witnesses however allege gross mismanagement both on part of the district administration as well as organisers of the satsang. “There were lakhs of people and barely a handful of police personnel. The Baba’s personal security personnel were handling everything including crowd control,” says Rani Devi, a Phulrai resident who survived the Satsang. Describing the moment when the stampede happened, Rani Devi says, “It was like a wave of the ocean. Some people started running and in the jostling crowd, some older women fell. Others fell over them. Many just asphyxiated to death under others”.
Rani Devi and others in Hathras remain divided over the actual cause of the stampede. As per a preliminary report, the Baba’s security team allegedly pushed and restrained followers trying to touch his feet. Some claim that it took place after devotees started running after the Baba’s cavalcade as he left the venue following the satsang. “They wanted to collect the ‘dust from his feet’ as a blessing,” Rani Devi says. Others like Sanjay Kumar Jatav who were present at the satsang and witnessed the tragedy claimed the stampede took place at least an hour after the Baba’s departure. “The real problem was bad traffic management. After the satsang, everybody tried to leave at once. It created confusion, the roads were muddy and slippery, some fell and couldn’t get up. A mass hysteria followed,” Jatav states.
Jatav’s bhabhi (sister in law) Savitri Devi was among those who could not get up. “I used to tell her to not care about these satsangs, that no good comes out of superstition. But she went with her neighbours as she was a believer in the baba,” Savitri’s husband Bir Pal Singh hailed outside the Bagla District Hospital in Hathras where 38 of the 121 bodies were brought on the night of July 2. Postmortems of many of the deceased persons was done a day later after families that had taken their kin’s bodies home brought them back.
Vinod, who makes a living selling bags in nearby cities, claims that even after the stampede which could have been prevented or contained, authorities remained lax when it came to disbursal and identification of bodies. “My mother’s body was found in Agra, my wife was found in Aligarh, daughter was found in Hathras hospital,” Vinod states. He was in Bareily for work when the incident happened and returned the same night after he got the news. “It took us all night to find the bodies and bring them back. Neither hospital authorities nor police helped. There was no procedure for identification of missing persons except doing it manually. Bodies were just lying crammed together in dark, unsanitary rooms inside the hospitals,” he recalls.
The FIR lodged by Uttar Pradesh police alleges that the organisers hid the actual number of devotees coming to the 'satsang' while seeking permission for 80,000 people even though lakhs were expected. The FIR further notes that the organisers did not cooperate in traffic management and hid evidence after the stampede, which broke out after people gathered there stopped to collect mud from the way the baba's vehicle was passing, PTI reported. The congregation conductor Bhole Baba or the organisers have not been named in the FIR, though his name is in the complaint. The police late on Wednesday booked Devprakash Madhukar and others among the organisers.
A day after the accident, an FIR was lodged and the Uttar Pradesh government announced a judicial probe into the Hathras tragedy. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visited the injured survivors in Hathras hospital before visiting the accident site amid intermittent spells of rain. The accident site lay strewn with torn slippers of women and children, hairbands, water bottles, broken bangles and other personal belongings but the CM’s visit drew media persons as well as locals who stepped over the broken belongings and craned their necks to get a better view of the CM in a sea of uniformed security forces. “Just hours ago, this place was filled with so many dead bodies,” Phulrai local farmer Room Kumar stated among the crowd.
Another man in the crowd, Akshay, who got stuck in the crowded satsang on Tuesday remarked that had there been even a quarter of the security present for the satsang the day before, none of this would have happened.
Another survivor, Premvati said that the lack of any first aid measures or medical services for emergency cases in nearby areas also caused the death of many. “There is no medical college in Hathras, neither any emergency hospital. Any case of serious injury has to be taken to Aligarh or Mathura which takes over an hour by car,” she states. The 57-year-old suffered a severe asthma attack in the middle of the commotion on GT Road and claims she survived due to the kindness of others. “I would have died there, but a neighbour saw me and pulled me out of the crowd by my hand. I was hyperventilating but she gave me water and calmed me down,” she recalls.
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Sohan Devi, in her sixties, who lived in the same village (Sokhana) as Premvati, did not share her luck. She had visited the satsang with about 7-8 other women from her family and her village. But as stampede swelled, she got separated from the rest. While the others made it back, she never did.
Stories of death hang like a miasma in Hathras along with the echoes of the hospital sirens and the screams that preceded their onset. Locals, many of who had never seen such a large crowd before, claim they are unable to forget the pile up of bodies. Nevertheless, the belief and ‘Astha’ in Baba Bhole Nath remains unshaken for many. “He is a Bhagwan, he has miraculous powers. What happened was not his fault,” Sohan Devi’s neighbour Chameli, asserted. The deceased Sohan Devi’s sons disagree. "Andhwishwas led to this disaster," they claim.
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A few kilometres away in Hathras town, Lala Ram who had lost his 22-year-old wife Kamlesh and six months old daughter demanded answers from the Baba. "How could he (Baba Bhole Nath) let this happen? He says he is a god man but no god would bring harm to his devotees," he stated. On Wednesday night, his wife was cremated in the pall of darkness and his little girl buried as he wept in the glare of media spotlights. "If there is a God, we hope he brings justice," he bemoaned.
