168 Hindu Pilgrims Die in Stampede at Temple

At least 168 devotees were killed and more than 100 injured in a stampede at a Hindu temple in Jodhpur, in India's western state of Rajasthan, officials said yesterday.

The disaster occurred as the doors were opened to the Chamunda Devi temple in the hilltop Mehrangarh fort complex. More than 25,000 worshipers had gathered there at the start of the Hindu festival of Navratra, a nine-day celebration of the nine incarnations of the Hindu mother goddess, Durga.

Doctors said that most of the dead were men. There were few if any visible injuries. Many died of suffocation and witnesses said that some slipped on temple floors wet with coconut milk, a traditional offering to Hindu gods.

Television images showed bloodied bodies being ferried to ambulances. A number of devotees had also been spread on the temple floors while friends and relatives appeared to attempt to revive those who had lost consciousness. One child cried over her father's lifeless body, wailing: "Daddy, please get up".

The cause of the stampede remained unclear, but Gulab Chand Kataria, home minister of Rajasthan, told reporters that a long line of devotees had been waiting to climb a hill when one of those queuing fell from the stairs, causing a panic.

One report said that the stampede was set off by the collapse of a wall, while it was also widely reported that it was caused by false rumors of a bomb, at a time when tensions are still high after recent attacks in India. The latest explosions were on Monday night in the western cities of Malegaon and Modasa, killing six people and wounding 45.

One witness, who called himself Santa, told Reuters that the crowd began to run because authorities tried to stop pilgrims from entering to make way for a VIP.

Police gave a different account. "The stampede started after a barricade near the temple broke and there was huge confusion and people started running down a steep slope and fell on each other," said Rajiv Dasoth, an inspector general.

Deadly crushes have occurred many times before at Indian religious festivals, when thousands of people gather to pray, and safety precautions are minimal.

Last month, a stampede outside a mountain-top Hindu temple in northern India killed at least 145 pilgrims. On that occasion, rumors of a landslide spread panic among pilgrims who ran down a narrow mountain trail from the Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh state, where thousands of people were walking up.

The worst disaster occurred in January 2005, when about 265 pilgrims were killed in a stampede near a temple in the western state of Maharashtra.

It is the third disaster this year at religious events in India.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh, on a state visit to France, expressed "shock and grief".

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) called on the government to begin regulating the flow of pilgrims at places of worship.