A long-cherished holy trip turned into tragedy for a family in south Calcutta.
One of the victims of the pre-dawn stampede at the Mahakumbh was Basanti Poddar, 63, a resident of Bijoygarh.
She was one of the two elderly victims from Bengal identified by the authorities till Thursday evening. Urmila Bhuniya, 78, from Salbani in West Midnapore, was the other.
Based on accounts of family members, at least six others from various districts in Bengal who visited the event in Allahabad remained untraceable till Thursday evening.
Basanti was accompanied to the Mahakumbh by son Surajit, daughter Pinki Das and elder sister Pushpo Saha. On Thursday evening, the three survivors reached Calcutta with the lifeless body of Basanti.
“We were walking towards the Sangam Ghat before daybreak (on Wednesday). Within minutes, the crowd seemed to swell. Everyone started running helter-skelter. All of us fell to the ground. My mother was buried under at least three persons. She
was crushed under hundreds of feet,” Surajit, 32, said at MR Bangur Hospital.
“She lay there for close to 40 minutes, writhing in pain before she stopped moving. I could not find any policeman at the spot. Three local youths came to help us. But it was too late,” said Surajit, flanked by Aroop Biswas, the local Trinamool MLA and Bengal’s minister for sports and youth affairs, power and housing, and Tapan Dasgupta, the ruling party’s councillor from Ward 95, where the Poddar family lives.
“Timely help or better crowd management could have saved my mother’s life,” he said.
Surajit, who works with a construction company, alleged that despite having had to wait for hours at a hospital in Allahabad, the post-mortem was not conducted and neither was a death certificate issued. “This was the case with several others,” he said.
Basanti’s daughter Pinki was inconsolable. “She was a devout woman. Going to the Mahakumbh to take a dip at the Sangam was her long-cherished dream. I was not supposed to join her on this trip but went at her insistence. Eventually, she could not take the dip and fulfil her dream,” she said, breaking down in tears.
Minister Biswas alleged mismanagement on the part of the Uttar Pradesh government. “The son was made to run from pillar to post for hours. But the post-mortem was not done. The death certificate was not given. There is so much publicity around the Kumbh Mela but the ground-level arrangements are not up to the mark,” he said.
Basanti’s body was taken to the Kantapukur morgue from the hospital.
“A death certificate will be needed for her cremation. The police brought her to us because ours is the nodal government hospital for areas under Golf Green police station,” said a senior official at MR Bangur Hospital.
“She was brought dead. So, a post-mortem was needed to ascertain the cause of death. It will be conducted at Kantapukur.”
Prasenjit Poddar, Basanti’s nephew, said the family wanted to cremate her as soon as possible because she had bruises all over her body.
Just over 3km away, the Poddars’ three-storeyed home in Ashwini Nagar, a congested neighbourhood, was crowded.
Neighbours stood at the mouth of the narrow bylane leading to the house and relatives at the doorstep.
“The group was so happy when they left for the Mahakumbh,” said Basanti’s sister-in-law.
The group reached Uttar Pradesh by train on Monday, she said.
On the second floor, Basanti’s husband, Rabindranath Poddar, was too shocked to speak. “What am I going to do now,” he asked more than once, seated on a chair.