Deadly crush at religious gathering in India shows how dangerous it can be to leave an event

More than 100 people were killed and scores more injured in a disaster involving large crowds at a religious gathering in northern India yesterday.

The disaster in the Hathras district, southeast of the capital New Delhi, occurred during a satsang (spiritual talk) by a popular preacher, attended by thousands of believers.

This is the latest disaster in a long list of crowd-pulling incidents in India.

Although this event was widely described in the media as a mass panic, this reporting obscures deficiencies in the planning and execution of the event.

India has experienced many such disasters

In India’s recent history, there have been several tragic disasters caused by crowds of people.

On January 1, 2022, a disaster at the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu and Kashmir left 12 people dead and 15 injured. The incident was triggered by a dispute among pilgrims during the New Year celebrations.

On December 28, 2022, a stampede at a political rally in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh left eight people dead as supporters rushed the stage.

On November 25, 2023, a mass incident at a university concert in Kerala, southern India, left four people dead and numerous injured.

In 1954, millions gathered for a religious pilgrimage at the Prayag Kumbh Mela in northern India, resulting in a mass casualty incident that killed around 800 people. This incident remains the deadliest mass casualty incident in India’s history.

According to a global database of crowd-related deaths, more than 1,477 people have died in over 50 devastating crowd-pulling events in India since 2000 (not including the most recent incident).

India remains one of the hotspots with the most fatal crowd accidents in the world, especially in the last two decades.

Other hotspots include Saudi Arabia (mainly due to incidents during the annual Hajj pilgrimage) and some parts of West Africa.

A sobering trend in mass accidents

A look back at the history of crowd accidents reveals a remarkable and sobering trend.

In the 1980s, most fatal accidents occurred at sporting events. Today, however, they mainly occur at religious gatherings, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

High-profile examples such as the Hillsborough stadium disaster in the UK in 1989 led to the development of crowd management policies, better practices and increased awareness in sports arenas, particularly in Europe. These measures have made sporting events significantly safer for spectators. However, there have been no comparable improvements in religious gatherings.

Today, large ticketed events typically have comprehensive risk assessment, planning and operational controls in place. Event organizers can monitor and identify risk as it develops and take action in real time. Planning includes, among other things, computer modeling the event in terms of crowd movement, estimating evacuation times, and monitoring how people enter and exit the site.

However, such measures are not necessarily necessary for mass religious events.

Outputs may be overloaded

According to media reports, the venue where the recent tragedy occurred was overcrowded three times.

A crowd that gradually gathers over a long period of time at such an event would eventually want to leave the venue all at once, meaning that the exits are completely inadequate.

This sheer inadequacy of escape capacity in relation to the size of the crowd appears to be one of the main causes of the recent tragedy in India.

In many cases, the enormous pressure of the crowd at narrow exits can lead to suffocation, as reported in this recent tragic incident. Those of smaller stature and height are clearly at greater risk, and this is reflected in the high number of reported casualties among women and children.

There is no mass rush

The media often uses the word “stampede” to describe such events. This is often a catch-all term for accidents involving crowds of people, often regardless of the underlying cause. It portrays crowd events as a disaster, particularly at religious gatherings or when the details of the incident are vague.

But the use of such terms has consequences. Essentially, blame is placed on the people involved in the incident and their behavior. In fact, crowd behavior is often not the main cause of such incidents.

Maintaining this narrative can often absolve organizers of responsibility and prevent authorities from investigating the root causes of the problem.

This leads to a vicious cycle of accidents without any practical measures being taken to prevent the next accident.

A member of the Indian Parliament told the New York Times:

Such incidents repeat themselves every year and we learn nothing from them.

We must learn from past events

Accidents in crowds, especially at mass religious gatherings in developing countries, are increasingly becoming a cause of premature deaths worldwide.

In recent weeks, more than 1,300 pilgrims have died during the Hajj, with the latest incident in India following shortly thereafter.

While the death toll is higher during Hajj, the mortality rate during the recent gathering in India was even higher (our calculations showed 0.065% during Hajj versus 0.77% during the India incident).

This requires strict regulation, appropriate risk assessment, planning, security precautions and crowd monitoring.

Targeted, fact-based awareness campaigns can raise public awareness and significantly reduce the likelihood and impact of such events.

Just as we aim to reduce road deaths to zero, deaths caused by crowding must also be recognised as a preventable cause that must be addressed, particularly in developing countries.