At least six people were trampled to death and dozens were injured in a stampede at the annual Ratha Jatra – chariot festival – in eastern India, police said yesterday.

The accident happened in the temple town of Puri on the coast of Orissa, where about 500,000 people had gathered.

Friday is the main day of the chariot festival, when idols of Jagannatha and other Hindu deities at Sri Mandira, the town’s main temple, are taken in huge decorated chariots to another nearby temple.

The huge, colourfully decorated chariots are drawn by hundreds and thousands of devotees on the bada danda, the grand avenue, to the Gundicha temple, about two miles to the north. After a stay of seven days, the deities return to their abode at Sri Mandira.

Ratha Jatra is an essential part of the ritual of the Hindu system of worship – literally meaning travel or journey. Ratha Jatra is among the grandest festivals on Earth Religious fervour often combines with bad crowd management at holy sites in India. Six pilgrims were crushed by crowds at a south Indian temple in January, while more than 250 pilgrims were crushed or burnt to death when a fire broke out at a temple in western India in 2005. (Reuters)

Explore Asia News

• China News

Times Recommends

• British ‘tortured and jailed Obama’s grandfather’
• BA in merger talks with Qantas
• Mumbai police were ill equipped