Shravan Shuddha Ashtami
ANANDPUR SAHIB: The images often get blurred in his mind and he still wakes up from sleep seeing splattered blood. But what Mange Ram remembers quite clearly is that minutes after Sunday’s killer stampede at Naina Devi, he was crushed under the weight of falling, fleeing bodies. Disoriented with fear and straining with exhaustion, he soon lost consciousness.
"When I woke up, I was in the middle of a row of bodies waiting for postmortem," the 19-year-old said, shivering, "my throat was parched and I asked for water. Towering over me the doctors and nursing staff at Anandpur Sahib Civil Hospital looked dazed. They must have been surprised to see a dead man come alive like that. But when was I dead?"
In a startling revelation that lays exposed the callousness with which the Himachal Pradesh government dealt with the Naina Devi tragedy and its 146 victims, it now seems that no officer cared to segregate the dead from the living before piling them up into waiting trucks for postmortem at the nearest hospital. Chillingly, many mela officers, those people in the administration given charge of overseeing pilgrimages, asked social workers running langars (free food stall) to identify the dead.
"How can we declare people dead," asked an incredulous Dr Sat Pal Aggarwal, an ayurvedic doctor from Nabha who has for years been running a langar at Naina Devi.
"On reaching the stampede site, Bilaspur district administration officials asked volunteers, mostly langarwalas, if they have identified the dead. It is the job of the administration and not the common man to do it. People were dumped quite haphazardly into trucks without following any procedure or checking if they were alive."
Many eyewitnesses said there was such confusion following the temple trample that health authorities gave all rules a go-by and bundled together those still breathing with those who weren’t anymore. No medical examinations were held and anybody found unconscious was assumed dead.
Vijay, a driver from Bilaspur who ferried 26 bodies to Anandpur Sahib hospital, also substantiated the charge. "When people (officials) put the bodies in my vehicle I found some of them breathing. A few died on their way to hospital. Had there been doctors at the accident spot many would have survived as they were unconscious merely from suffocation."
Additional district magistrate CP Verma, who is camping at Naina Devi after the stampede, told TOI on Tuesday that the first priority before the administration was to shift people to the hospital at the earliest.
"Considering the number of casualties, it was not possible to conduct medical examinations at the site. So the Anandpur Sahib Civil Hospital was entrusted with the responsibility of declaring people dead," he said. But, then, didn’t the mishap occur at Naina Devi, 18 km from Anandpur Sahib? "Yes," Verma said, "the matter of dead and injured being packed together would be inquired properly."
PC Akela, SDM-cum-mela officer, too, said his priority was to "transfer bodies" from the mishap spot.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
