Bodies lie on the ground outside the Mandar Devi temple near Wai town in the Satara district of Maharashtra on Jan. 25, after a stampede at a religious festival killed 267 pilgrims and injured more than 200 others. (Photo: AFP)

MUMBAI: A stampede at a hilltop Hindu shrine in Maharashtra on Jan. 25 claimed the lives of at least 267 people in one of the worst tragedies of its kind.

Women and children constituted the bulk of the victims in the noon-time disaster as thousands of people fleeing a sudden fire fell upon other devotees, crushing many of them, at the Mandar Devi temple at Wai village, about 155 miles from here and 12 miles from Satara town.

There was only a narrow path leading up to the shrine, suffocating those trying to desperately escape. Nearly 250,000 devotees had gathered at the temple on Jan. 25, believed to be an auspicious day.

“It was horrible,” a dazed man who lost a member of his family recalled later, sitting under a tree in Satara, where the dead and several hundreds of those injured in the tragedy were rushed.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed shock and grief over the deaths and announced ex-gratia payment of Rs. 50,000 ($1,111)to families of each of those who died in incident. The government has also ordered a judicial inquiry to ascertain the exact cause of the tragedy.

Grieving relatives assembled at Wai from different parts of the state to collect the bodies. Mass cremations were organized at various places.

Many children, whose family members either perished in the stampede or got separated were being taken care of by police. “It is difficult to identify bodies as in some cases entire families perished in the disaster,” said a district official, adding that many were charred beyond recognition.

Robert Moses, administrator of the Satara government hospital, said most of dead bodies brought to the hospital bore signs of death due to suffocation. No post mortem on the bodies was conducted.

Kalawati Shinde came from Satara town looking for her sister’s family soon after hearing the news of the stampede. She could manage to find only her seven-year-old niece at the Wai hospital. Other family members were feared killed. “My sister was with her family, including in-laws. I have not been able to locate their bodies yet. I really don’t know how the child escaped unhurt. I am absolutely shocked,” said Shinde.

A day after the stampede, uncertainty still persisted on what really caused the incident. Satara police superintendent C.P. Kumbhar said the stampede started after some devotees slipped on the steep staircase to the hilltop temple. The staircase was slippery because of coconut water used as an offering to the deity.

The situation aggravated soon when some makeshift shops at the temple caught fire and the cooking gas cylinders kept in the eateries exploded. As the fire quickly spread, panicky devotees, numbering about 250,000, ran down the narrow path from the hill shrine, trampling a large number of them. Witnesses blamed the stampede on an electrical short circuit in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple visited by hundreds of thousands this month every year. But the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) ruled any short circuit in the temple premises.