However, 36 people died in a stampede at a railway station in the nearby city of Allahabad, officials told the BBC.
The head of the Kumbh Mela festival organising committee in India has resigned a day after a stampede killed at least 36 people at the train station in the northern city of Allahabad.
State minister Azam Khan said he was “stepping down on moral grounds”.
A scrum of ambulances and television vans gathered outside a hospital in Allahabad late Sunday evening after at least 37 people were killed and dozens injured in the pilgrims’ rush to get home after the holiest bathing day of the Maha Kumbh Mela festival. The cause: part of a footbridge at the Allahabad railway station collapsed earlier that evening while thousands of people waiting on platforms to board incoming trains. The carnage increased in the ensuing panic and a stampede.
The Kumbh mela, a major religious festival for Hindus, is held in four places in India every years on rotation basis. However, some such festivals have got associated with various types of mishaps. The Maha Kumbh Mela of Allahabad which took place in 2013 is remembered for a mass stampede leading to the death of 36 pilgrims. Ironically, the accident happened on the most auspicious day of Kumbh, called the Mauni Amavasya.
Susan R. Holman, Satchit Balsari
A local Indian official resigned Monday after a chaotic crush at a railroad station a day earlier left 36 people dead among tens of millions of Hindu pilgrims flocking to the banks of the Ganges River for the world’s largest religious gathering.
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