Kumbh Mela Festival in India
It is the largest religious festival in the world and receives 400 million people, which is not humanly bearable. There have been 39 deaths.
It happens every year in India, and focuses on the Hindu religion. This year, the Indian government assured that it expected to host at the event, the world’s largest religious festival, 400 million people, more than the US population – About 40 times the entire Portuguese population brings together.
The festival lasts 45 days and the banks of the Ganges River, in Uttar Pradesh, in an extension of 40 km2, are filled with tents, people diving in the waters in a ritual of worship, campers and this year, Naga Sadhusnaked men and covered with ashs considered holy, who live isolated for religious reasons.
The place of worship is concentrated in the Triveni Sangamthe sacred confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers in Prayagraj, where believers dive to clean their sins and be freed from the reincarnation cycle (a popular belief in India).
To dive into Rio, this Wednesday was the most favorable day, according to, and it was expected that there were about 100 million people. Ran badly.
As the bridges and river access walks were overcrowded (they had already plunged tens of millions of people), the authorities began to ask people to take just one dive and back back.
But with the confusion and total overcrowding of space, many people began to feel suffocated and try to escape the crowd between railing and railing. 50 people were injured and at least 39 died crushed, Advanced number by.
In addition,, points out the chief minister of the region, “between 1h and 2 am, some devotees tried to cross the barricades which were placed in the area designated for monastic sects to bathe. This caused some injuries to devotees that were immediately sent to the hospital. ”
And this is not the first time this has happened in India: in 2013Also during Kumbh Mela, 42 people died in a multitude of devotees that arrived at a train station.
In the last summer, 121 people died In a religious meeting in Hathras, suffocated by a crowd, and later this month, six devotees also died asphyxiated due to the overcrowding of a temple in India.
