NEW DELHI, Jan. 26 -- More than 200 Hindu pilgrims, many of them women and children, were killed in a stampede and fire while visiting a temple in western India on Tuesday, authorities said.
The victims were among a crowd of about 300,000 who had assembled for a seasonal religious festival at the Mandra Devi temple on a hilltop in the town of Wai, about 150 miles southeast of Bombay.
Fires apparently set by pilgrims in the town of Wai, about 150 miles south of Bombay, burn along a packed, narrow walkway near a Hindu temple. The fire set off a stampede as worshipers attempted to flee.
(Rahul Deshpande -- AP)
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Such pilgrimages are common in this predominantly Hindu nation, where millions take to the roads each year to visit and make offerings to shrines and deities. Crowd control measures are often lacking at such events and stampedes are not uncommon, but the death toll in this case appears to have been exceptionally high.
Authorities said the incident began around midday as pilgrims shattered coconuts on the temple's stone steps as an offering to the goddess Kalubai. The steps became slippery with coconut milk, at which point some of the pilgrims lost their footing and triggered the stampede, local officials told news agencies.
A fire then broke out, and many of the victims were burned to death in a warren of small shops and restaurants near the temple.
Accounts vary as to the cause of the fire. Some local officials told Indian news agencies that the panicked crowd knocked over utility poles, causing a short circuit that triggered the blaze.
But the local police chief, Chandrakant Kumbhar, said the fire had been set deliberately. "A couple of devotees slipped and fell on the floor. A mob from behind walked over them," Kumbhar told the Associated Press. "When their relatives, who were still climbing the stairs, heard the news, they became angry and set fire to some shops."
The blaze quickly spread among the tea stalls and small restaurants that lined the crowded path that led up the hill to the temple. Witnesses described scenes of horror and panic as terrified pilgrims tried to outrun the flames and surging crowd.
"People were running down the hill -- it was madness," a shop owner, Vijay Wankhede, told the Associated Press. Wankhede's home and business were gutted by the fire.
Late Tuesday night, police and firefighters loaded bodies onto buses while sobbing relatives carried the crushed remains of family members down the narrow hill path.
Estimates of the number of dead ranged from at least 256 to about 300. The private NDTV network put the death toll Wednesday morning at 258. More than 200 others were reported injured.
Many of the victims were charred so badly they couldn't be recognized, so they were taken to local hospitals for identification. Television images from the scene showed smoldering buildings and rows of corpses wrapped in green sheets.
The temple, about 300 years old, is especially popular with lower-caste Hindus. Because the moon was full, Tuesday had been considered an auspicious time to visit.
