A stampede at a religious congregation here killed 116 people on Tuesday as devotees suffocated to their deaths and bodies piled atop each other in the worst such tragedy in recent years.
The stampede took place as people headed home after a ‘satsang’ in the district’s Phulrai village, conducted by a preacher known as Bhole Baba.
Twenty-seven bodies were brought to a hospital in neighbouring Etah district. Senior Superintendent of Police Rajesh Kumar Singh said 23 of them were women. And 89 lay dead in Hathras itself.
Aligarh Range Inspector General of Police Shalabh Mathur put the death toll at 116.
Victims, dead or unconscious, were brought to the Sikandara Rao Trauma Centre in trucks and ‘tempos’. The bodies lay scattered outside the health centre as people milled around them.
One video clip showed a woman crying, sitting amid five or six bodies in a truck. Another showed a man and a woman lifeless in another vehicle.
Clips before the stampede showed people in a large ‘shamiana’ listening to Bhole Baba. The baba sat before them on a throne-like chair.