Hathras Stampede: Toll reaches 121, FIR does not name preacher, CM orders judicial probe

Asked about this, Adityanath said at a press conference: “The initial FIR has been registered against those who sought permission for the event, and the investigation will expand to hold all responsible parties accountable.”

The CM did not rule out the possibility of a conspiracy. “We cannot dismiss this incident simply as an accident. If it is indeed an accident, we must identify those responsible. If it is not an accident, we need to uncover any conspiracies involved,” he said.

Addressing the media after inspecting the site of the stampede and meeting those injured, he said: “A judicial probe by a retired high court judge will be conducted into the incident… Retired officials of the police and civic administration will be part of the judicial probe and action will be taken against those found responsible.”

He said a Special Investigation Team led by the Additional Director General of Police, Agra, has already submitted a preliminary report.

Later in the day, the UP government said that retired High Court judge Brijesh Kumar Srivastava will lead the three-member judicial probe panel. Retired IPS officers Hemant Rao and Bhavesh Kumar Singh will be the other two members of the panel.

According to the government, the judicial panel, which has been asked to complete the probe within two months, will investigate the approval granted by the district administration and whether the conditions were followed. “It will investigate whether it was an accident or conspiracy and probe the management by the district administration and the police regarding crowd control and law and order. It will also investigate the reasons and conditions that led to the stampede,” an official said, adding that the panel has also been asked to give suggestions to prevent any such incidents in the future.

Earlier in the day, the chief minister said that while police were deployed outside the venue, the internal arrangements for the event were done by the sevadars (volunteers). “The most tragic aspect was that the sevadars, who usually prevent the administration from entering such programmes, tried to suppress the incident immediately after it happened. When the administration began transporting the injured to the hospital, most sevadars fled the scene,” he said.

Recounting his conversations with the injured, he said when the preacher’s convoy arrived at GT Road after the programme, a group of women approached him to seek his blessings, followed by a crowd, which led to a stampede. “The sevadars also pushed the people, resulting in the accident on both sides of GT Road,” he said.

The CM said that among the 121 killed in the stampede, six were from other states — four from Haryana and one each from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. “In Uttar Pradesh, the victims hailed from 16 districts, including Hathras, Badaun, Kasganj, Aligarh, Etah, Lalitpur, Agra, Firozabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Mathura, Auraiya, Bulandshahr, Pilibhit, Sambhal and Lakhimpur Kheri… As many as 31 are receiving treatment in hospitals in Hathras, Aligarh, Etah, and Agra, and all are reportedly out of danger,” he said. Most of the victims were women.

He announced plans to support the education of minor children affected by the stampede under the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Bal Seva Yojana.

Meanwhile, an FIR has been registered under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), 126 (2) (wrongful restraint), 223 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 238 (causing disappearance of evidence).

“The organisers had sought permission for a gathering of about 80,000 devotees, hiding the fact that lakhs of devotees had attended an earlier programme. A crowd of about 2.5 lakh people from different districts and nearby states had gathered. Traffic on GT Road was blocked due to non-compliance of permission conditions,” says the FIR, registered on a complaint filed by Sub-Inspector, Sikandrarau police station, Brajesh Pandey.

“After addressing the gathering, when Surajpal alias Bhole Baba, was leaving the venue at around 2 pm, the devotees started collecting dust/ soil from the path of his vehicle. On the other side of GT Road, the crowd kept getting crushed in a three-foot-deep field filled with water and slush. The police at the spot took the injured to the hospital, but there was no cooperation from the sewadars. The evidence was fabricated by throwing away the belongings, clothes, and shoes of the injured persons at the scene of the incident,” says the FIR.