About 115 pilgrims fell victim to a stampede on Sunday in a small town north of the Madhya Pradesh state capital of Bhopal during the Hindu holy festival of Dussehra at the temple of Ratangarh, BBC News reported.
The current death toll is 115 with 110 others in critical condition. Many of the victims were women and children according to BBC News.
About 15,000 devotees gathered outside the town of Datia to celebrate when panic broke out on a bridge leading to the temple; the railings broke and panic triggered the stampede, according to Reuters.
Some worshippers were crushed to death due to the stampede and some drowned after falling or jumping into the river Sindh, Reuters reported. Local media reported to Reuters that local police used batons to control the crowd, causing people to panic.
An emergency team of doctors and specialist divers were sent to the scene, but paused the investigation when night fell on Sunday, according to BBC News.
The bridge, which had been rebuilt since another stampede in 2007, was about 500 meters long; according to BBC stampedes are notorious during Hindu relgious festivals.
In 2011, over 100 devotees died at a festival in the southern state of Kerala, BBC reported. In the past year, dozens of deaths have been reported in three similar tragedies.
In 2008, in the Jodhpur's Mehrangarh Fort, more than 220 people were killed in a stampede at the Chamunda Devi Hindu temple, BBC reported. This past February a stampede killed 36 Hindu pilgrims at the worlds largest religious festival, Kumbh Mela festival, which takes place in northern India.
An analysis on BBC stated that the reason for the "deadly stampede" is the lack of crowd-control technoqies and pre-planning by the authorities. Also stating that the Indian bureaucracy and security forces are not readily equipped to manage such large groups during these major events.
"On occasion, rumours of an accident or a bridge collapse have also triggered stampedes. Repeated accidents of this kind only show that no lessons have been learnt," Anbarasan Ethirajan of BBC News said.
