Lost in a crowd

But Ramdas, owner of Saptashringi, has to just close his eyes and he travels back in time, to the same street on August 27, 2003, when lakhs thronged through the narrow lane for a shahisnan on what was considered as the most auspicious day of the Kumbh.

8216;8216;I was standing outside my shop looking at about 25 lakh people pressing against each other, trying to make their way to the river for a holy dip,8217;8217; he remembers. 8216;8216;The crowds were unbelievable and there was chaos. In 15 minutes the street was scattered with bodies.8217;8217;

8216;8216;I have never seen so many people congregate here,8217;8217; adds the veteran of four previous Kumbh melas. TWO years later, the government still doesn8217;t know why it happened. The latest from the desk of

V. Ramani, the man heading the magisterial enquiry into the stampede, is that the investigation is in its final stage. The former divisional commissioner of Aurangabad and present director of the state8217;s mother-child health and nutrition mission says the report will be submitted to the government 8216;8216;well before the year-end8217;8217;.

Irrespective of what the report will say, Nashik is sharply divided on who was responsible for 8216;8216;this black spot on the pilgrimage city8217;8217;.

The police enquiry, ironically conducted by the same officer who was in-charge of the Ram Kund area that day, has already been submitted. Makrand Ranade, DCP Nashik Zone, was on ground zero in 2003. 8216;8216;We had earmarked a route for devotees coming in for a dip and a separate route for people who were leaving the area,8217;8217; Ranade says. 8216;8216;But people were not following directions and they broke the police barricade. In the meanwhile some holymen started throwing silver coins at the crowds, triggering the stampede.8217;8217;

The police filed a case of 8216;8216;causing death due to negligence8217;8217; against two priests and 25 others. Investigating officials even followed them in hot pursuit to Vrindavan and Mathura.

While they came back empty-handed, the holymen named in the FIR eventually surrendered in court and were granted bail. Their case is still on in the Nashik district courts.

BUT not everyone is buying the police version. Eye-witness accounts recorded then clearly state there were no coin-throwing holymen. Many believe that the tragedy could have been avoided if the 8216;8216;police had done their job8217;8217;.

The district administration has maintained that they had repeatedly warned the police of the possibility of a stampede. Some officials say that around noon, over an hour before the mishap, messages of the possibility of a stampede in the area had been flashed. Half-an-hour later, additional policemen headed towards the site. Even as they slowly honked their way through the nearly two crore devotees who had congregated in Nashik, women and children were being trampled upon.

Many say that the police was 8216;8216;taking the situation lightly8217;8217;. Journalists recall that the 8216;8216;crowds were frightening8217;8217; and almost everyone was anticipating a problem.

Rubbishing the coin flinging holymen theory, the critics say that all the big akhadas had already left the site when the stampede occurred.

The Kumbh mela will revisit Nashik in 2014. The city would have forgotten the scars of 2003, but Ramdas hopes the lessons learnt are not.