Allahabad stampede: Railways inquiry committee arrives in city

ALLAHABAD: A three-member inquiry committee constituted by Railways to look into the February 10 stampede that claimed 38 lives arrived here today.

The committee, headed by Additional Member (Traffic), Railway Board, Devi Prasad Pandey and comprising IG, Railway Protection Special Force, Gopal Gupta and Advisor(Engineering) Pradeep Kumar arrived here this morning.

They visited the site of the stampede at Allahabad junction.

Sources said that members of the committee, which was constituted by Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal a day after the tragedy are likely to stay on till tomorrow for further investigations.

Bansal had constituted the committee after visiting the site of the incident.

Altogether 38 persons, a majority of them women and including an eight-year-old girl, were killed in the stampede which the Railway Minister had blamed on tardy crowd management by the local administration.

Two of the deceased, a woman and a man, are yet to be identified.

The UP government has ordered a judicial inquiry into the stampede even as Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had dismissed allegations of deficiency in crowd management pointing out that no untoward incident took place anywhere else in the city on the day which saw a staggering three crore visitors on the main bathing festival of Maha Kumbh congregation.