New Delhi: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday ruled out any conspiracy behind the stampede at the New Delhi station and said there was no extraordinary rush either, even as agencies enhanced crowd control measures by deploying additional security personnel, creating holding areas and intense CCTV monitoring.
Sources said a team of police officials visited the station on Monday to procure the CCTV footage to determine the sequence of the events that led to the stampede on February 15 that left at least 18 dead and 15 injured.
Five of the injured are still undergoing treatment in hospitals, even as survivors continued to recount their near-death experiences and officials remained on the toe to ensure no untoward incident happens.
Amid all this, the New Delhi Railway Station continued to witness a surge of passengers, most of them travelling to the Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj.
A source in the Delhi Police said eight companies of paramilitary forces have been deployed inside and outside the station area. Trains going towards Prayagraj are being monitored.
He said Joint CP (Transport) Vijay Singh and DCP (Railway) KPS Malhotra are monitoring the situation.
“We have set up barricades, intensified patrolling and deployed quick reaction teams. CCTV surveillance has also been enhanced with control rooms monitoring real-time footage,” a Delhi police official said.
Sources said the Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel are conducting patrol to regulate the flow of passengers at the station, one of the busiest in the country.
Among other crowd control measures, a designated ‘pandal’ has been set up outside the station where passengers could rest while waiting for their trains. The ‘pandal’ will remain in place till February 26, when the Maha Kumbh Mela is scheduled to end.
At the station, an RPF constable was seen making regular announcements through a handheld loudspeaker, informing passengers about the newly installed ‘pandal’ near the exit gate.
Railway Minister Vaishnaw said holding areas will be created at 60 stations experiencing high footfalls, a separate crowd management manual will be formulated and awareness will be raised among passengers to not sit at stairs.
Talking about the stampede, he told mediapersons here, “No conspiracy looks at the moment.” He also said information available till now showed that there was no extraordinary rush either when the stampede broke out.
He also dismissed platform change announcement as a cause of the stampede, saying, “The inquiry committee is looking into it deeply.”
Railway officials said the total capacity of all 16 platforms at the busy New Delhi station at any point of time is 48,000 passengers as each platform can hold 3000.
“On February 15, the day of the incident, between 6 pm and 8 pm, around 12,208 unreserved tickets were sold. While on other days, this number is usually around 9,600. Between 8 pm and 10 pm while 8,900 unreserved tickets are sold on other days, on February 15, 7,600 unreserved tickets were sold,” a railway official said.
“One Prayagraj Special was operated from platform number 12 at 7:15 pm and seeing the increase in the sale of tickets, one more special was planned which was waiting at the same platform at 8:50 pm,” the official added.
An announcement was made around 8:30 pm for this Prayagraj Special train at platform 12, but some passengers got confused and thought that the announcement was made for Prayagraj Express, the official said.
“They were at platform 14 to board the Prayagraj Express but it looked like the announcement confused them and they started moving for platform no 12,” the official said.
“While climbing the stairs, where a lot of passengers were sitting, one of them with a heavy load on his head, became unstable and fell behind on other passengers causing a stampede,” the official added.
Vaishnaw said the war room set up at Rail Bhawan to get live feed from various stations including New Delhi showed these stations didn’t have extraordinary crowds.
“We have learnt from the past failures and mistakes and that’s the reason such a huge crowd of passengers have been managed so well. While in the previous Kumbh Mela, only 4,000 trains were run, this time we planned 13,000 trains and 12,583 trains have already been operated so far,” he said.
“No country in the world faces such a big mobilisation. Railway officials have worked day and night. It is extremely difficult work to manage such a huge crowd,” Vaishnaw said.
Meanwhile, harrowing experiences the passengers caught in those chaotic hours continue to come to the fore.
Poonam Devi, who is in her 50s, had come here from Bihar to meet her daughter and son-in-law, knowing little this would be their last meeting.
Asha Singh, a relative of the deceased, said Poonam and her husband Meghnath Kushwaha had travelled to the Maha Kumbh Mela before coming to Delhi.
“She was returning to her village Gangajal on Saturday, unfortunately she became a victim of the incident,” Singh said.
Prabhu Shah, a grieving father, shared the heartbreaking loss of his 24-year-old daughter. “My daughter moved to Delhi’s Bijwasan just six months ago after getting her first job. On Saturday, she was travelling to the Kumbh Mela with her aunt, who was her local guardian, and her cousin,” Shah said.
Manoj, a daily wage worker and the sole breadwinner of his family, also lost his life in the stampede, leaving behind his wife and two children in despair.
