The stampede prior to dawn at the Hindu Festival massive in northern India created ravages. But the order was quickly restored in the next few hours.
On Wednesday morning, the ambulances crossed a swarm of millions of people who had gathered in the city of Prayagraj. They ferred dozens of people to hospitals, some who had been trampled until death.
Local officials moved to resume the rites at Maha Kumbh Mela, trusting thousands of video cameras “with AI”. Soon, the faithful were doing what they came: bathe in the confluence of three rivers considered sacred, one of them mythical. A helicopter showed rose petals over the seers leading the sacred sauce.
The authorities had studied prints in previous iterations of the festival. But as prepared and equipped as they seemed to be, they did not release even an initial number of deaths for almost 15 hours after the tragedy.
What they kept throwing were good news: regular updates about how many people had completed the bath ritual.
The shortage of information about the victims of the stampede, analysts said, seemed to be an official effort to cover up damages in an event that is important for the fortune of political leaders. He left the families of those looking for loved beings in the dark, running from one hospital to another.
And he left a cloud on the official count that was finally launched on Wednesday night: 30 dead and 90 wounded.
Among those who were looking for their loved ones in the void of the information were Shiv Shankar Singh, 55, a retired army officer that he and his wife had bathed in the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, and the mythical Sarasvati , shortly after midnight, and then caught me in the stampede.
He looked for it all day, arriving at the foot from one hospital to another in an area where the vehicle movement had been restricted by miles.
“Everyone was pressing everyone else. My wife fell, ”said Singh. “I grabbed a post and stopped on the floor. I saved myself, but I don’t know what happened to him. “
The Kumbh Mela, which occurs every 12 years, is a massive task for any standard. This year, due to a rare heavenly alignment, it was considered a unique occurrence in the century. The Government of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, said it hoped that more than 400 million pilgrims and visitors arrive in Prayagraj for the 45 -day festival.
Yogi Adityanath, the state prime minister, is considered among the contestants that happen to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The analysts said that he put himself in front and the center as the organizer of the world’s largest meeting in an attempt to build his national profile as an administrator that could mix two loved things to India: faith and technology.
While evaluating the preparations for the festival in early January, Mr. Adityanath, 52, had indicated fingers to his predecessors about the operation of past festivals, which had led to mortal prints. He said he wanted arrangements that could be “a lesson for those who had made the organization of the Maha Kumbh synonym of dirt and stampede.”
“Yogi has been promoted as Pradesh larger than life, bigger than Uttar,” said Rasheed Kidwai, author and political analyst. “The success of the event would have meant announcing to the world:” Here is a man who microgestioned a meeting of 400 million people effortlessly. “This position would become important for the post -modi era.”
The Uttar Pradesh government has a public relations budget of more than $ 100 million for the year, and Some of that goes to the media that provide friendly coverage.
It also has introduced a new social media policy That gives financial incentives to influencers who promote the success of the State, while promising actions against “government schemes incorrect or incorrect intention,” according to news reports.
The control of that influence was clear after the tragedy. The television channels headed the regular telephone conversations of Mr. Adityanath with Mr. Modi, 74, and that everything was under control. They repeated a video statement from Mr. Adityanath, in which he did not mention the deaths, but asked people not to fall in love with rumors.
But some saw through the public relations campaign.
“It is a reminiscence of the opacity of Prime Minister Yogi Adityanath and his government after generalized deaths during the second Covid-19 wave in March 2021, whose scale was evident later when it was horrible Images of bodies floating in the Ganges It emerged, “the Hindu wrote, a national newspaper, in an editorial on Thursday.
Mr. Adityanath has ordered an investigation into the period. Its officials have not explained what caused the delay in providing a number of victims. His office did not respond to comments requests.
Vikram Singh, a former Chief of Police of Uttar Pradesh who has supervised the arrangements in the past Kumbhs, said that a part of the delay could be attributed to the mass logistics demand of such a large event. The authorities would have focused on evacuating the injured and obtaining the right treatment, he said.
But he also struggled to understand the scope of the delay, which he only fed a rumor factory that “I was working overtime” to put the number of deaths from 50 to 200 in the official information vacuum.
The other Mr. Singh, who had been separated from his wife, went to the lost festival and found positions to look for her. He recorded a complaint with his details. He returned to the confluence of the rivers. He walked from one hospital to another and returned to the festival site.
There, at night, Mr. Singh finally had good news in one of the lost and found centers. His wife had fallen into the stampede but, luckily, he was not injured and had been waiting for him for hours.
“If they had communicated, then I would have found it much earlier,” he said, referring to the lost and found cabins. “But I’m happy now that I found my wife.”
Pragati Kb and Queen Raj New Delhi contributed reports.
