Dozens of others injured after 1000’s of devotees queue exterior one of the crucial visited Hindu temples in southern India.
No less than six individuals have been crushed to loss of life and dozens injured as a crowd surged at one of the crucial visited Hindu spiritual websites at Tirupati city in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
An enormous crowd gathered to gather free entrance tokens to go to the city’s Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple when the crush occurred on Wednesday evening.
“The unlucky incident … has claimed the lives of six devotees. I pray to God to offer peace to the departed souls,” Prem Kumar Jain, spokesman of the state’s ruling Telugu Desam Occasion, advised reporters.
Since early on Wednesday, devotees from throughout India had begun to congregate for a 10-day competition on the temple that begins on Friday.
Authorities had arrange counters to distribute free tokens from Thursday to go to the virtually 2,000-year-old temple however the crowd pushed and jostled, in response to the workplace of N Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of the state.
In a submit on social media platform X, Naidu mentioned the deaths “grieved me intensely”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi supplied condolences to the households of the deceased. “My ideas are with those that have misplaced their close to and pricey ones,” his workplace mentioned on X.
Lethal accidents are widespread at locations of worship in India throughout main spiritual festivals as a result of poor crowd administration and security lapses.
In July final 12 months, as much as 121 individuals had been killed in Hathras town of the northern Uttar Pradesh state throughout a Hindu spiritual gathering.
One other 112 individuals died in 2016 after a huge explosion brought on by a banned fireworks show marking the Hindu New Yr at a temple within the southern Kerala state.
Wednesday’s incident got here days earlier than the beginning of the Kumbh Mela, a six-week Hindu competition of prayer and sacred bathing anticipated to be the most important spiritual gathering in historical past. As much as 400 million pilgrims are anticipated to attend, in response to organisers.
