Delhi stampede: Sunaina Devi of Muzaffarpur in Bihar recalls the scream she heard over the phone from her daughter-in-law in Delhi, whom she had called to enquire if her 11-year-old granddaughter Suruchi had left for Prayagraj.
“My daughter-in-law’s parents live in Samastipur. They had recently gone to Delhi with the plan to attend Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj along with other family members,” recalls the resident of Bahadurpur village on Sunday.
“Nothing could have prepared me to hear the deafening scream on Saturday night after which the call got disconnected, leaving me in fear of the worst”, she said.
Sunaina Devi’s husband Naresh Sah said, “I am a daily wage labourer. I reached home last night around 10 pm, after a day’s hard work. I found my wife weeping and muttering incoherently. I could only understand that she had learnt something terrible from my son and daughter-in-law”.
“So I started frantically trying to contact my son Manoj whom I could contact around midnight. He told us that Suruchi and her maternal grandparents died in the stampede at the New Delhi Railway Station“, says Sah.
District administration officials reached the house of Sah at Bahadurpur village on Sunday and assured the family of all help.
Also Read: New Delhi Station stampede: How Maha Kumbh-bound pilgrims lost their lives
At least 18 people were killed in the overnight stampede at the packed New Delhi Railway Station, with a senior railway official saying on Sunday that the incident occurred after some passengers slipped and fell on others while coming down from a footover bridge.
More than a dozen people were also injured in the stampede on Saturday night at the railway station which witnessed a surge of passengers waiting to board trains for Prayagraj — where the Maha Kumbh is underway — on platform number 14 and 15 of the station.
Details were awaited on the exact number of people from Bihar who died in the stampede.
