300 killed, 200 injured in Satara stampede

As many as 300 Hindu pilgrims, including women and children, were crushed or burned to death in a stampede and subsequent fire near a temple in Maharashtra's Satara district today, the district's top official said.

Officials said a short-circuit could have sparked a fire in roadside stalls when nearly 300,000 people were on an annual pilgrimage to the popular Mandher Devi temple, on a hilltop near Wai, about 260 km south-east of Mumbai.

So far, over 200 bodies have been brought to various hospitals here by state transport buses. Most of the deaths occurred due to suffocation after being trampled over.

Maharashtra Water Resources Minister Ajit Pawar said more than 300 were killed and the toll could go up.

Scores were crushed to death on the steep and narrow hill path leading to the temple and many others were charred, witnesses and officials said.

Reporters saw at least 100 bodies at the site. "About 300 people are dead," Sharad Jadhav, resident deputy collector for the Satara district where the temple is located, said.

He said police had evacuated most of the injured to nearby hospitals using commuter buses and trucks. "We do not have a precise number of people injured but several dozens have been taken to hospitals," he said.

Dishevelled and mangled bodies were lined up as tin-roofed stalls smouldered near the temple and adjoining settlement, situated on the craggy hilltop about 4,000 feet high.

"There more than a hundred dead bodies lying around and dozens of others have already been sent down to Wai by bus," an Asian News International television reporter said. "It is utter mayhem here. The sheds are still smouldering," he added.

Witnesses said the stampede started around midday after pilgrims slipped on the temple's steep stone steps, which had become wet after coconuts were broken as an offering to the local deity Kalubai.

A short-circuit in an overhead power cable then sparked a fire in make-shift stalls selling flowers, sweets and food, causing cooking gas cylinders to explode, officials said.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said the immediate concern of the government was to provide aid to the wounded in hospitals.

On reaching the stampede site, he announced an ex-gratia of Rs 1 lakh to the kin of the deceased and Rs 25,000 to seriously injured. He said Rs 10,000 would be given to those having minor injuries.

Deshmukh, along with Deputy Chief Minister RR Patil, Water Resource Minister Ramraje Nimbalkar and Satara Guardian Minister Dilip Walse-Patil visited the site of stampede.

The 300-year-old temple is popular among lower caste Hindus who undertake the annual pilgrimage on a full-moon day in January and participate in a 24-hour-long festival that includes ritual animal sacrifices to the goddess.

In 2003, more than 32 people died at a stampede in Nasik, another town in the western Maharashtra state, during the Kumbh Mela.