
LUCKNOW: Amid Mauni Amavasya tragic stampede at the Sangam Ghat claiming 30 lives and leaving 60 injured, reports have emerged about another stampede that took place in Jhunsi area across the confluence of the three rivers.
Although there is no official confirmation about this second stampede, eye-witnesses say it took place almost three hours after the first one when a crowd returning after the bath ran into an uncontrollable bunch of devotees who were rushing towards the ghats for the dip.
Meanwhile, the Mela authorities claimed to have documentation of every one dead and injured during the Wednesday stampede and that there was nothing to hide.
“We do not have any information about the second stampede. However, we will gather inputs about any such event, if it has happened at all. We will get the sequence of events it investigated and take corrective measures in order to avert any such incident in future with the upcoming third Amrit Snan on basant Panchami, February 3,” said Mela DIG, Vaibhav Krishna.
As per the local sources, the second stampede-like situation arose around 2 km away from the sight of bigger stampede on Wednesday. However, the Mela authorities, including the Mela DIG Vaibhav Krishna, did not confirm the second crush in Jhunsi where the toll was claimed to be around half-a-dozen.
According to the ground reports, the Jhunsi crush also happened due to excessive crowd pressure and the closed pontoon bridges as some of the women devotees fell to the ground after getting suffocated in the crowd pressure and could not get up again as people ran over them.
Meanwhile, during the media briefing on Wednesday, Mela authorities, including Mela officer Vijay Kiran Anand and DIG Vaibhav Krishna, talked about only the casualties that took place in the stampede at Sangam nose.
As per the video clips of the Jhunsi incident went viral on the social media and ground reports -- TNIE doesn't confirm the veracity of these videos -- despite heavy rush of devotees aspiring for a Snan on Mauni Amavasya, things were well under control till 6 am and pilgrims were returning to exit Mela after taking the early morning dip in Sector 18. As they were moving out of the mela premises they came under the crowd of devotees rushing towards the ghats from the opposite direction.
The crowd kept on swelling with people from two directions joining the melee.
As per the eyewitnesses quoted by some media reports, amid the chaos for nearly half an hour, the crowd stormed into the nearby power substation and even kiosks in the area in a bid to get out of the troubled site and save life.
However, the sources on the ground claimed that in the aftermath of Jhunsi crush, police personnel reached the spot and called the ambulances ferrying the injured to the central hospital.
According to figures provided by the state government, an estimated 7.65 crore devotees took a dip in the holy confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers on Mauni Amavasya.