Three persons, including a child, were killed and around 20 others were injured in a stampede at a Durga Puja pandal in Bihar on Monday night.

The incident occurred around 8.30pm at Raja Dal in Gopalganj, around 150km northwest of Patna.

Six of the 20 injured persons are in critical condition and have been referred to hospitals in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh for better treatment.

“A boy in the crowd fell down at the puja pandal. Two women tried to save him.
They all were trampled upon by the crowd. They faced difficulty in breathing as
well. All of the three had died by the time people brought them to a hospital,” Gopalganj district magistrate Nawal Kishor Choudhary told reporters.

The deceased were Aayush Kumar, 5, Urmila Devi, 55, and Shanti Devi, 60.

The deaths jolted the district administration into action and started controlling the movement of devotees at puja pandals.

Choudhary directed puja committees to hold Dashmi programmes only between 9am and 4pm on Tuesday.

He ordered an investigation into the stampede. Gopalganj Sadar subdivisional officer (SDO) Pradeep Kumar will lead the probe team.

Video footage of the place prior to the stampede shows that there were no crowd control arrangements at the pandal nor steps were taken to channel its movement.

“The number of police personnel deployed at the spot was also inadequate. When the number of people swelled, the situation soon out of control,” said a source.

Some video clips also show a few youths and policemen using lathis to control the crowd, but it added to the commotion.

Choudhary told The Telegraph that the number of pandal hoppers at Raja Dal had “swelled up to 5 lakh” and their movement was slow as many of them, especially youths, had spent time taking selfies and recording videos.