The pre-dawn stampede at the massive Hindu festival in northern India created havoc. But order was restored swiftly in the next few hours.
On Wednesday morning, ambulances cut through a swarm of millions of people who had gathered in the city of Prayagraj. They ferried dozens of people to hospitals, some who had been trampled to death.
Local officials moved to resume the rites at the Maha Kumbh Mela, relying on thousands of “A.I.-powered” video cameras. Soon, the faithful were doing what they came for: bathing at the confluence of three rivers considered sacred, one of them mythical. A helicopter showered rose petals on seers leading the holy dip.
Officials had studied stampedes at earlier iterations of the festival. But as prepared and equipped as they seemed to be, they did not release even an initial death toll for nearly 15 hours after the tragedy.
What they kept releasing was good news: regular updates on how many people had completed the bathing ritual.
The dearth of information on the victims of the stampede, analysts said, appeared to be an official effort to cover up damage at an event that holds significance to the fortunes of political leaders. It left families of those searching for loved ones in the dark, running from hospital to morgue.
And it left a cloud over the official tally that was finally released on Wednesday evening — 30 dead and 90 injured.
Among those searching for their loved ones in the vacuum of information was Shiv Shankar Singh, 55, a retired army officer He and his wife had bathed at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, and the mythical Sarasvati, soon after midnight, and then got caught in the stampede.
He searched for her all day, making his way on foot from hospital to hospital in an area where vehicular movement had been restricted for miles.
“Everybody was pushing everybody else. My wife fell down,” Mr. Singh said. “I grabbed a pole and stood on the ground. I saved myself, but I don’t know what happened to her.”
The Kumbh Mela, which happens every 12 years, is a massive undertaking by any standard. This year, because of a rare celestial alignment, it was deemed a once-in-a-century occurrence. The government in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, said it expected more than 400 million pilgrims and visitors to arrive in Prayagraj for the 45-day festival.
Yogi Adityanath, the state’s chief minister, is considered among the contenders to succeed Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Analysts said he put himself front and center as the organizer of the world’s largest gathering in an attempt to build his national profile as an administrator who could mix two things dear to India: faith and technology.
While assessing the preparations for the festival early in January, Mr. Adityanath, 52, had pointed fingers at his predecessors over the operation of past festivals, which had led to deadly stampedes. He said that he wanted arrangements that could be “a lesson to those who had made the organization of the Maha Kumbh synonymous with filth and stampede.”
“Yogi has been touted as larger-than-life, larger-than-Uttar Pradesh,” said Rasheed Kidwai, an author and political analyst. “The success of the event would have meant to announce to the world, ‘Here is a man who micromanaged a gathering of 400 million people effortlessly.’ This posturing would become important for the post-Modi era.”
The Uttar Pradesh government has a public relations budget of over $100 million for the year, and some of that goes to media outlets that provide friendly coverage.
It has also introduced a new social media policy that gives financial incentives to influencers who promote the state’s success, while promising action against the reporting of “government schemes in a wrong manner or with wrong intention,” according to news reports.
The hold of that influence was clear in the aftermath of the tragedy. Television channels headlined Mr. Adityanath’s regular phone conversations with Mr. Modi, 74, and that everything was under control. They repeated throughout the day a video statement by Mr. Adityanath, in which he made no mention of deaths but asked people to not fall for rumors.
But some saw through the public relations campaign.
“It is reminiscent of the opacity of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his government after the widespread deaths during the second Covid-19 wave in March 2021, the scale of which was evident later when horrific images of bodies floating in the Ganga emerged,” The Hindu, a national newspaper, wrote in an editorial Thursday.
Mr. Adityanath has ordered a probe into the lapse. His officials have not explained what caused the delay in providing a casualty toll. His office did not respond to requests for comment.
Vikram Singh, a former police chief of Uttar Pradesh who has overseen arrangements in past Kumbhs, said a part of the delay could be attributed to the massive logistical demand of such a huge event. Officials would have been focused on evacuating the injured and getting them proper treatment, he said.
But he, too, struggled to understand the extent of the delay, which he said only fueled a rumor mill that “was working overtime” to put the death toll anywhere from 50 to 200 in the vacuum of official information.
The other Mr. Singh, who had been separated from his wife, went to the festival’s lost and found stands to look for her. He registered a complaint with her details. He went back to the confluence of the rivers. He walked from hospital to hospital and back to the festival site.
There, in the evening, Mr. Singh finally had good news at one of the lost and found centers. His wife had fallen down in the stampede but, luckily, wasn’t hurt and had been waiting for him for hours.
“If they had communicated, then I would have found her much earlier,” he said, referring to the lost and found booths. “But I am happy now that I found my wife.”
Pragati K.B. and Suhasini Raj contributed reporting from New Delhi.
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