NEW DELHI: From political rallies and festivals to temples and railway stations, India has watched similar scripts unfold again and again. The authorities shrug, announce compensation and move on, while stampedes have gone on to claim more than 110 lives this year.
The tragedy in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district is only the latest entry in this bloody catalogue. What should have been a celebratory rally of actor-turned-politician Vijay ended in a massacre.
With thousands of people crammed into narrow lanes, chaos erupted when people perched on a tree behind his van fell into the crowd, triggering panic. More than 40 people, including women and children, were crushed to death.
The organisers had no crowd dispersal plan, no evacuation routes and no medical preparedness. Despite knowing the star power of Vijay, the state administration failed to impose strict limits.
Earlier at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Uttar Pradesh, seven pilgrims were killed and 10 injured when the sheer weight of humanity moving towards the riverbanks collapsed into a deadly crush.
This was not the first Kumbh tragedy. In 2013, more than 30 devotees died in Allahabad when a footbridge gave way under the pressure of a surging crowd. The lessons of the disaster were loudly proclaimed, yet a decade later, the same mistakes were repeated.
The national capital itself is no stranger to such horror. On February 15 this year, 18 people – including nine women and four children — were killed at the New Delhi Railway Station when an overcrowded foot overbridge turned into a death trap.
As passenger density spiralled out of control, a single head load falling from a passenger sparked panic. Within minutes, a staircase became a mound of bodies.
The Delhi High Court, while hearing a petition on the tragedy, lambasted the Railways for ignoring Section 57 of its own Act, which fixes maximum capacity for each coach. “A basic adherence to the law could have prevented this,” the Bench had observed.
In Karnataka, a stampede at a distribution programme in Bengaluru last year killed 11 persons. In Hathras in Uttar Pradesh, 121 people, mostly women and children, suffocated in July 2024 when a preacher’s satsang drew far more than the approved number.
In Andhra Pradesh, the Tirupati stampede left multiple devotees dead despite clear warnings about overcrowding. Goa too saw its share of tragedy when a religious event turned fatal. Even cinema turned deadly when a stampede during special screenings of Pushpa 2 in Telangana claimed a woman’s life, forcing the government to ban benefit shows.
The official response has been predictably monotonous. In Bengaluru, Rs 10 lakh was offered to the deceased’s families. In Hathras, a judicial probe was announced. In Tirupati, the Andhra Government declared Rs 25 lakh compensation. In New Delhi, the Railways paid Rs 10 lakh per deceased. In Karur, leaders rushed to offer condolences and cash relief.
Every time, money is disbursed, inquiries are set up, and political leaders move on, until the next stampede. But the problem is not money, it is the refusal to prioritise human life over spectacle.
As Congress MP Shashi Tharoor bluntly said after the Karur tragedy: “Every year, there seems to be an incident. Something is deeply wrong with crowd management in this country. We need enforceable rules for all large gatherings.”
His words echo the frustration of a nation that has heard the same promises after Hathras, Bengaluru, Delhi and Prayagraj, only to see them broken.
Highlighting the deeper problem, a social activist and lawyer Vineet Jindal says, “Political rallies treat crowd size as a proof of popularity, pushing organisers to pack spaces far beyond capacity. Temples, shrines and religious events are treated as matters of faith rather than public safety.”
“Meanwhile, the Railways sells more tickets than its coaches can carry and makes no attempt to enforce platform regulations. Unwilling to offend organisers or curb religious enthusiasm, the local police and administrations often look the other way,” Jindal added.
Most countries regulate entry, stagger arrivals and deploy technology for real-time crowd monitoring at such events. During the Prayagraj Kumbh of 2019, India itself showed that controlled access, wider bridges and holding zones can drastically reduce risk. But such measures require political will, something that disappears the moment the spotlight fades.
“Each death in these stampedes is preventable. Each one is the result of official indifference, administrative weakness and the cynical politics of crowd-gathering. Until organisers are held criminally liable, safety protocols are mandated and officials punished for lapses, India will continue to bury its dead under the same headlines,” Jindal added.