Seven killed in stampede near Gangasagar

Seven people were killed and 17 injured in the wee hours of Thursday in a stampede when people jostled to a catch a ferry to go to Gangasagar for a holy dip.

Seven people were killed and 17 injured in the wee hours of Thursday in a stampede when people jostled to a catch a ferry to go to Gangasagar for a holy dip.

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Three of the injured are critical.

Gangasagar is an island in the Bay of Bengal at the point where the river Muriganga (a distributary of the Hooghly) merges with the sea.

Of the seven dead, there were five women and a child. They had gathered at a jetty to catch the ferry and reach the hermitage of Kapilmuni (a mythical sage), about 150 km south of Kolkata.

The incident occurred at 4.40 am, when it was dark and foggy. “Barricades were (removed) before (the police gave instructions to do so), leading to a surge of the crowd down the slope that led to the water,” said Srikumar Mukherjee, West Bengal civil defence minister.

Of the dead, one woman was from Haryana and two from Uttar Pradesh.