NEW DELHI, 29 September — At least 16 people died yesterday in a stampede in the Uttar Pradesh state capital of Lucknow after a political rally by India’s Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, witnesses said. Police said 25 others were injured in the stampede that began when people headed for the main railway station in the city to catch trains home.
Bua Singh, chief of India’s Railway Protection Force, confirmed 11 deaths but rescuers at the site reported 13 dead and warned the toll was likely to rise as many of those injured were in serious condition. State deputy police chief D.P. Sinha said people from the rally climbed down stairs to reach the platform and began jostling passengers. In a sudden rush they toppled and fell over one another.
Railway police chief Singh said some 150,000 of them headed for the station after the rally ended and choked the facility into a sea of humanity. Three of the thousands who thronged the station climbed atop a passenger train to reach home but were critically injured when they came into contact with high-voltage overhead rail traction cables, Singh added.
City authorities cordoned off the rail station and rushed in police contingents. Sinha said the victims were supporters of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which governs Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, jointly with Advani’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party. Witnesses said the station was crowded with thousands of people when the stampede occurred, adding that many of the injured were rushed to hospital nearly an hour after the accident.
A massive crowd turned up at the rally, where Advani accused a group with links to Pakistan of carrying out a massacre at a Hindu temple in the western state of Gujarat. “The massive crowds which had emerged on the ground were not mere followers of a political party but also its ideology and were also part of a movement,” he told journalists before news of the stampede.
