At one point, a crowd of tens of thousands of people, almost all women, were chanting and swaying in devotion before a revered holy man in front of them on stage, all packed under a huge tent in northern India.
But when the guru left, people began pushing and elbowing each other to get out of the cramped space and stifling heat beneath the pavilion. Some began to fall into the muddy field below or into an adjacent ditch. Panic and screaming ensued. Bodies piled up on top of each other everywhere.
By nightfall on Tuesday, the toll from the tragedy in Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh state was devastating: at least 121 people, mostly from poor communities, had died and dozens more had been injured.
For families, the search for the remains of their loved ones took them to several hospitals and lasted until after midnight.
At the Bagla Combined District Hospital, where 34 victims were taken, bodies lay on melting ice sheets lining the corridor. Faces bore the marks of the afternoon’s gruesome stampede: a patch of mud hanging from the hair, threads of dried blood on the skin. The green carpet in the corridor was soaked with slush and mud from the shoes and slippers of distraught relatives.
Outside, on the terrace, dozens of ice blocks were piled high. Ambulances brought in a constant stream of dead bodies. A policeman went from body to body, accompanied by relatives, while writing down details in a red diary.
A husband crouched on the wet floor next to his wife’s body, hitting his head against the hallway wall. A grandfather held the tiny fingers of his only granddaughter. A son bent down to examine his mother, trying to find her body.
The eerie silence of the hospital was frequently interrupted by heart-wrenching cries of pain when a victim was recognized.
The holy man — Narayan Sakar Hari, or Bhole Baba as he is more widely known — was a government employee before he became a Hindu guru and began drawing large crowds. Villagers said he had become an icon for women from the Dalit community, at the lowest rung of India’s rigid caste system, who have historically been marginalized as “untouchables” and denied access to temples.
The crowd had arrived at Tuesday’s meeting on buses, trains and taxis before heading to a tent erected on farmland near the highway. They had come from all over the state, some walking from neighboring districts. Some had come alone, others with neighbors, friends, children or grandchildren. It was a congregation they absolutely did not want to miss.
Hans Kumari, 40, had arrived by taxi with ten other women. She had begun following Bhole Baba in the hope of receiving a cure for her chronic health problems: pain in her knees and difficulty sleeping. Some women in the village had told her that the holy man could help her, so she began attending his meetings regularly.
“We arrived early yesterday to get a good place to sit,” he said.
Ms Kumari said a commotion broke out after Bhole Baba finished his sermon, left the stage and drove away in a vehicle.
“People started running like crazy. Most of them were women,” she said. “I slipped into a ditch and walked on what looked like a bed of corpses. I could see two dead women and a child under my feet. Body upon body.”
Kumari said she managed to get out, with bruises on her head and all over her body, by keeping “her head down and her hands outstretched to continue cutting.”
Others were not so lucky.
“The bus carrying the devotees had already reached the village. My mother was not on it,” said Bunty Kumar, 29, disheveled and in tears after arriving at the government hospital. “We finally found a photo of her lying on a patch of ice on the Internet. That’s when we realised she was dead.”
Saudan Singh, a 62-year-old farmer, sat calmly beside the body of his only grandson, 2-year-old Rehanshu, lying on a patch of ice, his short hair spread out in all directions. Part of his yellow T-shirt peeked out from under a white sheet. His father was too distraught to approach the body to identify it.
Mr Singh said Rehanshu had arrived by bus with his mother, who was a devotee and frequently attended spiritual revivals. He lost both of them.
“He came with his mother by bus,” Singh said. “She had attended many of his sermons before. I had attended some too. He teaches us about brotherhood, humanity, peace and love.”
Her pain was palpable as she described her love for the mischievous boy. “My grandson called me ‘baba,’” she said. “He would ask me for candy, bananas and cookies.”
Mujib Mashal He contributed reporting from New Delhi.
