A day after a stampede killed nearly 115 devotees and injured over 100 during Navratri festivities near Ratangarh temple in Datia district, negligence on the part of the district administration emerged as the main reason for the escalation of the toll.
Despite the congregation being an annual affair, there was no standard operating procedure in place like traffic plans, provisions of separate entry and exit points and barricading to control the crowd.
Moreover, despite the temple being only 60 km away from district headquarters, it took the Superintendent of Police, C S Solanki, more than six hours to reach the spot.
“The SP reached the spot at 3 pm. I cannot comment on why it took him so long to reach,” D K Arya, DIG Chambal range told Express. There was no response to the messages sent to Solanki.
The District Magistrate, who is responsible for the administration of the 400-year-old temple, also reached the spot in the evening around 6 pm.
According to locals and eyewitnesses, the temple premises and the adjoining areas were being manned by merely 50 police officials, supervised by a sub-inspector level officer.
Even after getting to know of the stampede, which occurred at 9 am, officers posted in the adjoining police chowkis did not take it seriously and reached the spot only after 11 am. “Vehicles are required to be stopped at a distance of 4 km from the temple. However, on Sunday, the constable-rank policemen who were manning the area around the bridge were openly taking bribes from tractors, that were ferrying devotees to the temple, to allow them in the no-traffic zone,” Sameer Garg, a local journalist, said.
The accusation was, however, denied by Chambal range DIG Arya. “A force of 250 police personnel, including SAF (Special Armed Forces), led by the SDOP, was deployed to manage the crowd. News about bribes being taken are baseless,” Arya told Express.
The Congress has demanded that accountability be fixed to punish those responsible for the tragedy. “It is a complete administrative failure as the whole pilgrimage management was left with the local police chowki in-charge. For Modi’s rally in Bhopal they deployed more than 5,000 policemen but in Ratangarh, when it was known that 4 to 5 lakh devotees would turn up, the BJP deputed less than 30 policemen. The magisterial inquiry that has been ordered is just an eyewash,” party spokesman Pankaj Chaturvedi said.
Countering the attack, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said, “The BJP denounces Congress politics on the tragedy. All parties should discuss ways to avoid such tragedies in the future. Ratangarh is not an isolated incident.”