At least 121 people, most of them women and children, died in a stampede at a Hindu religious congregation in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the worst such tragedies in recent years.
A police document said around 250,000 people, more than triple the capacity permitted by authorities, had gathered in a village in Hathras district, about 200km southeast of the national capital New Delhi, when the stampede occurred.
Here is a list of major stampedes in India over the years, most of them at religious festivals or gatherings:
January 2005: More than 265 Hindu devotees were killed and hundreds more injured after a stampede at the Mandhardevi temple in Wai town in the western state of Maharashtra. The stampede was caused by slippery steps leading up to the temple, media reported at the time.
August 2008: At the mountaintop Naina Devi temple in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, about 148 Hindu pilgrims including several children, died after rumours of a landslide triggered a stampede.
September 2008: A total of 250 people were trampled to death at the Chamundagar temple in the northern desert state of Rajasthan as pilgrims gathered to celebrate Navratri, a nine-day festival that celebrates the Goddess Durga.
March 2010: At least 63 people, more than half of them children, were killed in a stampede triggered by a massive rush for free food and clothes at a Hindu temple in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, media reported.
January 2011: 102 people were killed in a crush sparked by a traffic accident during a Hindu pilgrimage in a remote mountainous area of the tourist-rich Kerala, in south-west India.
February, 2013: At least 36 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a stampede on the busiest day of the Kumbh Mela, a gathering where more than 100 million pilgrims gather over a period of two months, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Of the dead, 27 were women, including an eight-year-old girl.
October 2013: Around 115 people were killed and more than a hundred injured after a stampede at the Ratangarh temple in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh after more than 150,000 people gathered to celebrate Navratri.
January 2022: At least 12 people died and more were injured in a stampede at the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu and Kashmir, after a huge crowd of devotees tried to go into the shrine though its narrow entrance.