Wednesday night’s stampede at Tirupati that killed six people happened because of insufficient police deployment, local media reports said, but temple authorities blamed “chaos” that had followed the lawkeepers’ move to open the gates to help a sick devotee.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam was to start handing out tokens from 5am on Thursday for darshan during the 10-day Vaikuntha Ekadashi festival that starts at the Venkateswara Swami temple on the Tirumala Hills on Friday, a TTD official said.
However, he added, some 4,000 to 5,000 pilgrims had thronged the counters from Wednesday evening.
B.R. Naidu, TTD chairman, said a woman devotee who was standing in the queue felt breathless and the police decided to take her to hospital. So they opened the gate “slightly”.
It led to “utter chaos” as people waiting in the queue pushed those in front of them, he said. The Tirupati district police chief endorsed the claim.
The local media, however, reported that the absence of enough police to control the crowd led to the tragedy.
The TTD had planned to issue 1.2 lakh tokens at 90 counters set up at eight centres in Tirupati and four counters at one centre in Tirumala. Already 1.4 lakh tickets and 19,500 Srivani (VIP) tickets had been released online.
“For five minutes we thought all of us were dead. I have been coming to the temple for the past 25 years and nothing like this ever happened,” D. Venkata Lakshmi, an eyewitness, told PTI.
Many other devotees complained about the long waiting hours to get the tokens. Several of them confirmed that a sudden opening of the gates had prompted the crowd to surge forward.
Lakshmi told a vernacular news channel that six boys had pulled her aside and given her some water to drink after the stampede.
She said people had rushed forward and up to 10 devotees fell down where she was standing. “Though I was (shouting) that I was falling… people were still rushing from behind and could not be controlled…. People were walking over devotees. I could not breathe for a long time,” she said.
Had the police allowed the devotees to proceed in an orderly way, disaster could have been averted, she said.
Another devotee said: “The police were outside, not inside.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his thoughts were with those who had lost their “near and dear ones”.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, urged Congress workers in Andhra Pradesh to provide all possible assistance to those affected.
The dead have been identified as G. Rajani, 47, Lavanya, 40, and Shanti, 34, from Visakhapatnam; Mettu Selam Mallika from Tamil Nadu; Nirmala, 52, from Karnataka; and Boddeti Naidu Babu from Narasipatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
Tirupati collector S. Venkateswar said most of the 40 injured had been discharged from local hospitals.
The Andhra Pradesh government has announced a compensation of ₹25 lakh each to the families of the dead and ordered a probe.