KURNOOL: One man died and 69 people were injured during the Banni festival on Devaragattu Hill in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh on Saturday midnight.
The Banni festival is a local village custom in which villagers beat each other with sticks as part of the Vijaya Dasami festival.
In spite of elaborate police security, Banni participants from several villages in Kurnool and Karnataka clashed, leading to a stampede-like situation. A 60-year-old man suffered a heart attack in the melee and collapsed.
His identity is yet to be established. Six of the sixty injured were admitted to Adoni Government Hospital as their injuries were serious.
For years, both police and human rights organisations have been discouraging the villagers of Neradiki and other villages to refrain from the ‘violent’ tradition, but to no avail.