As the Hathras administration and top UP govt officials put the number of those dead in the stampede on Tuesday at a self-styled godman’s satsang in the district’s Phulrai village at 121, Singh feared his child could be one of them, or, worse, a victim yet to be accounted for.
Hundreds of relatives since late Tuesday night have been involved in a heartbreaking search for their loved ones along stretches of the Delhi-Etah highway, in clearings and waterlogged plantations and fields.
The hunt for the missing has now raised a question: Are there more bodies to be spotted and counted? Or, are some of the missing women and children being treated in hospitals in neighbouring districts with their relatives yet to reach them?
“I have no clue where she went,” said Singh. “Laali was lost in the crowd. She was not in any of the hospitals that I have scanned. She is too small. I don’t know what to do.” He added, “These fields are filled with water, she could have drowned… I’m so helpless. There are many like me looking for their daughters, mothers and sisters…”
Bhoop Singh, a resident of Bahjoi, had come to attend the satsang of Surajpal Singh, also known as Bhole Baba and Narayan Saakar Hari, with his nine-year-old daughter. He said, “There was already a large crowd when the prayer meeting started and then it quickly began to swell. She could have been swept anywhere with the force of the crowd. Even men were unable to bear that (pressure).”
Another man, Rajesh Yadav, a resident of Etah, looked around for his mother Uma Devi (65), who had come with a ‘sangat’ (group of women) to attend the satsang. “She was staying in a tent near the venue,” Yadav wept.
“My mother doesn’t have a phone,” he said desperately. “By around 8pm, we reached Sikandra Rau where the event was being held. Cries of death and chaos filled the air amid the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles ferrying the injured and dead. I went to a hospital and just sat down on the floor after I saw a huge pile of bodies. What should I do now?”
Through the night, a TOI team saw bodies being brought in tempos and even trucks. People checked the corpses in the hope of identifying their kin. Yadav told this correspondent that he had inspected almost a hundred dead faces. “I still can’t find my mother.”
Many of the victims were first brought to Sikandra Rau’s combined health centre. From there, a large group was shifted to other hospitals in Hathras, Aligarh, Etah and Kasganj. In most cases, without informing their families.
Some distance away, Aligarh resident Kuldeep Kumar told TOI that his 32-year-old wife and five-year-old daughter are nowhere to be found. “I went to the hospital. Nothing there for me,” he said, as others hunting for their kin tried to give him confidence. At least five bodies were discovered in the bushes early on Wednesday, they said.
