Amid wails, despair at Hathras mortuary: ‘We don’t know what happened’
They had come to attend the satsang (religious congregation) where a stampede claimed at least 116 lives.
3 min read
Ice blocks outside the mortuary at Hathras District Hospital. (Express Photo by Abhinav Saha)At the Hathras District Hospital as bodies lie on blocks of ice, hundreds of people jostle to find their loved ones. Intermittently, the humming sound of the crowd gives way to loud wails as people identify their own.
“We have been trying to find the body of my uncle, aunt, and cousin. There is a woman in a black saree lying next to a four-year-old child. Her face is swollen. We think it is her, but I am not sure,” says 18-year-old Aisha, accompanied by her 19-year-old brother Sonu.
They had come to attend the satsang (religious congregation) where a stampede claimed at least 116 lives.
“Her (aunt’s) daughter is married in Ghaziabad. She will reach here in some time. I have sent her the videos. I hope she recognises them,” adds Sonu.
Nearby, Kavita Devi’s 18-year-old daughter is among the dead.
“We came in a group of 80 people from Bilsi village in Badaun district. My daughter left the venue first. She told me that she was leaving. But then she called me to inform me that she was in the hospital. When I reached here, the doctors told us that she is no more. Had the doctor attended her on time, she would have been alive,” says the mother.
“The satang happens every month on the first Tuesday in different areas. We have been attending it for the last 7 years. This never happened before,” says Kavita Devi, who runs a tea stall with her daughter in their village. Her husband died when her daughter was 5.
As the crowd outside the hospital grows in size, policemen outside the mortuary seek details before they let only one person from a family inside.
“My aunt is among the dead. She was 70,” says Vinod Kumar Suryavanshi, 38, from village Barse.
“The weather was not good. It had started pouring. So, people started leaving. Soon, it turned chaotic. I am waiting for her sons to arrive, and then we will decide what to do,” he says.
Jugnu Kumar is waiting for the autopsy of his aunt to get over so that he can take the body to their village Chota Nabipur Khurd. “The organisers had sent a vehicle for the women to reach the satsang venue. We don’t know what happened. Nobody has anything to say,” he says.
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