The pan shop owner near Allahabad High Court could hardly suppress his fury as he pointed to the empty road in front of him that was crowded with pilgrims even on Wednesday night.

“The police said they blocked this road today to allow passage to some senior officers who have arrived from Lucknow,” he told The Telegraph, shouting an invective against what some pilgrims called the “VIP syndrome”, visible everywhere at the Kumbh.

“Go to the next crossing and see the tandav (chaos) there,” he said.

The next intersection, barely 200 metres away, teemed with tens of thousands of men, women and children, squatting on the roads or crossing a 500m flyover. A sign said: “Beware, damaged bridge.”

Yet, hundreds were walking across the flyover towards the Prayagraj Junction, dragging or carrying their luggage on their heads and shoulders — ignoring the danger a day after a stampede at the Kumbh killed, by official count, at least 30 people.

This gap between the arrangements for VIPs and ordinary devotees came up repeatedly in conversations on Thursday with the pilgrims, still shell-shocked by the human tragedy whose actual toll is expected to be far higher than the government’s figure.

The 1.30am stampede on Wednesday occurred when a surging crowd broke down barricades near a blocked pontoon bridge, 1.5km from the Triveni Sangam — Ground Zero of the pilgrimage.

Barricades have been put up across the 4,000-hectare (40sqkm) Mela area and Allahabad City, forcing ordinary pilgrims to trudge anything between 12km and 30km each way to take the holy dip — so that VIPs can have their Sangam tryst without hassles.

The VIPs at the Kumbh come in many shapes. They can include prominent sadhus, senior politicians and celebrities — and even officials scurrying to work out ways of preventing a recurrence of Wednesday’s disaster.

Hundreds on Thursday continue to use a Kumbh flyover despite a signboard that says ‘Beware, damaged bridge’. Picture by Piyush Srivastava

The road before the pan shop was blocked for four hours on Thursday morning — and a part of the Mela area for two hours — so that the vehicles of chief secretary Manoj Kumar Singh and DGP Prashant Kumar could rush to the Kumbh site for post-stampede confabulations.

So, the sense of irony was palpable among the pilgrims when the DIG, Mahakumbh, Vaibhav Krishna, announced after meeting Singh and Kumar that the entire festival area would now be a no-vehicle zone so that the devotees faced no problems.

Another post-stampede announcement that has attracted mockery on the streets is one about the suspension of all VIP passes and stoppage of VIP visits to the Mela.

“If that’s true, why is over 30 per cent of the Mela area — which had been developed for VIPs and their vehicles — still blocked to the ordinary devotee?” asked Saumitra Chakravarty, 25, a pilgrim from Calcutta.

“They have cordoned off a 25m radius around the Triveni Sangam from the ordinary pilgrims. Who have they reserved this area for, then?”

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath has blamed the stampede on unruly pilgrims and asked the devotees not to insist on bathing at the Sangam but do it anywhere in the Kumbh area. Eyewitnesses say the police’s caning of the pilgrims contributed to causing the tragedy.

Garbage ride

While the chief minister claims the Mela management has been excellent, a 65-year-old Indian American who manufactures ice-cream in Chicago and his wife, a US postal employee, have failed in two consecutive attempts to reach the Sangam since arriving in Allahabad on Tuesday.

“We walked about 20km on Tuesday and 20km on Wednesday but the police kept diverting us from one route to the other,” the man, who had arrived in Allahabad from Gandhinagar in Gujarat, said as he breakfasted with this reporter in his hotel’s restaurant.

“Both times, we returned to our hotel feeling hopeless. We were so tired on Wednesday night that we paid the driver of a garbage-carrying van ₹1,500 to drop us at the Civil Lines, from where we walked the 1.5km to our hotel. I overheard someone saying: ‘See, there goes garbage’.”

Asking not to be identified, he said: “There’s practically no government, no system, no police and no administration at the Mahakumbh. You are on your own — whether you live or die. We watched television news and read in the newspapers about how great the arrangement for the devotees was, but they were all lies.”

He added: “I’m willing to pay ₹50,000 to anyone who takes me to the ‘nose’ of the Sangam and arranges for a holy dip. But I heard that some hoteliers are offering this for ₹2 lakh per bather. Sorry, I don’t have that kind of money…. This government is suffering from the VIP syndrome.”

Sadhus’ appeal

On Thursday, Puri Shankaracharya Swami Nishchalanand Saraswati, Akhil Bharatiya Dandi Swami Parishad president Swami Maheshashram, and some members of the All India Akhara Parishad urged devotees through the media not to rush to the Triveni Sangam but bathe anywhere in the Mahakumbh area.

“The entire area is as pure as the Triveni…. People shouldn’t rush to the Triveni Sangam,” the Shankaracharya said.

The appeal — which parrots the government’s line and is in sync with one of the objectives behind the widespread barricading — drew derision.

“Why do the Shankaracharyas and other sadhus bathe only at the Triveni Sangam, then?” asked Chakravarty, the Calcuttan.

Vehicle bar

If the police were so far arbitrarily stopping some of the incoming cars and buses outside Allahabad, they have been stopping all vehicles since the stampede.

“While most pilgrims are being forced to walk 12km to 30km to reach the Sangam area, those whose buses and cars are being stopped outside the city have to walk even longer,” said Sushila Singh, who came from Kanpur five days ago and was resting near the Hanuman Mandir at the Sangam.

Thousands of pilgrims can be seen squatting on the roads in the Kumbh area or any other part of Allahabad City. The Prayagraj Junction, Prayag station and other railway stations in the city have been overcrowded since the Mela started on January 14. The crowds outside are even bigger.

“A minor incident in such a crush can turn into a big tragedy, as was seen on Wednesday. Yet, after so many deaths, the government hasn’t learnt anything and is still mistreating the devotees,” Amrendra Singh, 55, a pilgrim from Jaunpur, said.

He said the police were well-behaved in the daytime “but turn into monsters at night”.

“You must have seen videos of how they were pushing the devotees with their lathis when the stampede happened. They smile in the daytime when you ask directions but insult you when you do it at night. Maybe they are in their elements at night,” Singh said with a wry smile.

Probe committee

Adityanath has hinted at a conspiracy behind the stampede. “We have to dig deeper into the reasons for the stampede — how such an incident could take place after every care was taken,” he said on Wednesday night.

Later, he sent five senior IAS officers to manage the Mahakumbh till Basant Panchami, February 3, when the third Amrit (Shahi) Snan is expected to attract crores.

He has also formed a three-member judicial inquiry committee with retired high court judge Harsh Kumar, former DGP V.K. Gupta and former IAS officer D.K. Singh. It will submit its report within a month.

Adityanath had set up a similar judicial inquiry commission last July when 126 people died in a stampede at the satsang of Suraj Pal aka Baba Sakar Hari in Hathras. That panel, supposed to submit the report in two months, has received extension after extension.

Its report is yet to come but Suraj Pal, whose security guards have been blamed by most devotees for the tragedy, has claimed he has got a clean chit.

Finger at cops

Moments before the stampede, devotees had pleaded with the police to open the barricaded routes to thin out the surging crowd, Reuters has reported.

“People were asking police to open the barricades to other routes as it was suffocating to stand there in that crowd for almost an hour. We couldn’t breathe,” the agency quoted Jagwanti Devi, who was in the crowd with her family of six, on Thursday.

“Then suddenly my mother fainted, and some other elderly people also fainted, which created a commotion. We fell down and many people stepped over us,” Devi, wailing next to the bodies of her mother and sister-in-law at a mortuary, said.

Shweta Arya, 21, a medical student who with her group of five friends was among those who got trapped, said the festival administration was to blame.

“It was a clear failure on their part. Many lives would have been saved if they had just removed the barricades to let us through,” Arya said.

Corpse count

Sources at Allahabad Medical College and Hospital told this newspaper they had counted more than 40 dead. Some of the dead had been taken to two other hospitals.

A Mela volunteer at the stampede site said: “There are at least 700 unclaimed bags and over 1,000 pairs of slippers here.”

Ajay Singh, an eyewitness from Gonda, said: “There were thousands either crushing others or being crushed. I don’t know how many died.”