40 years ago April 15, 1986: 47 die in Kumbh stampede

Forty-seven pilgrims died when a stampeding crowd trampled over them in Haridwar just after the Kumbh bath began. Thirty-nine others were injured, two seriously, when a token barrier gave away under pressure from thousands of people. Within moments, hundreds of pilgrims had fallen in writhing heaps. The UP police staff posted at the spot was suspended by CM Vir Bahadur Singh. An inquiry was ordered, and compensation of Rs 20,000 was announced to the next of kin of the dead and Rs 5,000 to the injured. The Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, is yet to make up his mind about the fate of his party vice-president, Arjun Singh, who has come under a cloud following severe strictures by the Madhya Pradesh HC for giving long-term liquor contracts when he was chief minister. A squadron of F-111 fighter-bombers took off from the US base at Upper Heyford in Oxford, Britain. But the US Air Forces said the exercise had nothing to do with the current crisis with Libya, adding that the operation was “purely coincidental”. The flight by 13 of the long-range bombers had no connection between “what is happening here and what is happening in Libya,” Captain David Lamb, the chief spokesman at the US base in Upper Heyford, said. The 12 Common Market countries invoked limited diplomatic sanctions against Libya, but at the same time urged “restraint on all sides” in an apparent reference to possible US military action against the North African nation. After a four-hour emergency meeting of European Economic Community foreign ministers called to deal with the crisis, the 12 nations issued a communique calling for “restrictions on the freedom of movement of diplomatic and consular personnel, reduction of the staff of diplomatic and consular missions and stricter visa requirements and procedures” for Libyan nationals.