In Nalanda, faith turned fatal

On March 23, when the results of the Bihar School Examination Board for Class 12 were announced, Kundan Kumar, a 20-year-old resident of Mathurapur village in Noorsarai town in Bihar, was thrilled. He had secured 65%, which meant he achieved a first division. His mother, Rekha Devi, 45, was overjoyed too, and handed him ₹1,000 to buy new books. A few days later, the family visited the Sheetla Mata temple in Maghra village of Nalanda district, about 10 kilometres away, to offer their prayers and celebrate Kundan’s success.

According to temple priest Shubham Kumar, 30, Sheetla Mata is considered an avatar of Goddess Durga in Hinduism, as mentioned in the religious text,Skanda Purana. The temple, spread over 1.5 acres, attracts devotees who believe that bathing in the cool waters of its pond can help cure skin diseases.

On March 31, the day Kundan’s family went to the temple, the crowd grew quickly. It was the last Tuesday of the Chaitra month in the Hindu calendar, believed to be a significant day for spiritual practices, particularly for worshipping Goddess Durga. Locals say that on any regular day, 500-1,000 devotees visit the temple. However, according to the police, more than 10,000 people had gathered for the special prayers that day.

This sudden surge led to a stampede between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m., claiming nine lives, including Rekha Devi’s. Eight were women, and one was an unidentified man. Most of the victims were from Nalanda.

Rekha Devi’s daughter, 24-year-old Sharmila Kumari, who got married last month, had also accompanied her mother to the temple.

“My mother was the one who used to take care of us because our father is mentally ill,” Sharmila says. “He has been undergoing treatment at the Central Institute of Psychiatry [in Kanke, Ranchi] for the last decade.” Following the incident, she worries not only about her father, but also her two younger brothers.

Kundan clutches the new books to his chest, weeping. “My mother always encouraged me to study and become a big government officer so that our financial burden would lessen,” he says. “All she did was go to pray. She never returned.”

Kundan’s biggest regret is that he was not inside the temple; he was standing outside when the incident took place.

The anatomy of a stampede

Sharmila, her husband Vijendra Kumar, Rekha Devi, and Kundan reached the temple at around 8:30 in the morning, Sharmila recalls. They bought flowers for the puja and joined the crowd.

Sharmila says there was no proper queue. Only she and her mother went inside the temple, while her brother and husband stayed outside. Although men are allowed to enter the temple, it is generally women who come to worship.

At 9:30 a.m., they finally entered. Within minutes, there was chaos. She saw people pushing one another. Then someone yelled, “Mar gayi, mar gayi (She is dead, she is dead).”

“People started falling over each other,” Sharmila says. “My mother also fell down. I could not understand what was happening. Hundreds of people were around me, and they were all shouting the names of people they were with.”

In the melee, she lost sight of her mother. “People pushed me into a corner, but my mother was left in the middle of the crowd,” she says.

After some time, she began searching for her mother near the exit. By then, Kundan had found his sister.

About half an hour later, locals and devotees began pulling out bodies lying inside the temple premises just a few meters away from the inner sanctum. Rekha Devi was among them. They rushed her to the Biharsharif Sadar hospital, about 6 km away, on a scooter, as no ambulance had arrived. “The doctors declared her brought dead,” Sharmila says.

Sharmila is as grief-stricken as she is angry. She says there was not a single police person in sight, either inside or outside the temple to manage the crowd.

She also alleges that a temple priest was taking money from devotees and allowing them to enter through the exit gate. “Because of this, the exit gate also got blocked,” she says.

Trapped inside

Punam, who had gone to the temple with her mother, alleges that when chaos broke out, authorities shut the gates and put up bamboo barricades, worsening the situation. She claims that both the entrance and exit were blocked.

She had gone to celebrate scoring 63% in the Bihar School Exam Board. “My mother had promised we would visit the temple if I passed with a first division. Within minutes of reaching, I lost her,” she says.

Dinesh Rajak lost his wife, Rita Devi, 50, in the stampede. A father of six and a resident of Sakunat locality in Biharsharif, he came to know about the incident only some two hours later.

Dinesh, who earns a living by going from one village to another selling spices, says his wife and daughter had gone to the temple that day without mobile phones. “At around 12:30 [p.m.], I received a call from an unknown number,” he says. “I heard my daughter crying. She told me that her mother had fainted in the temple and had been taken to Sadar hospital.”

He rushed there. “I found my daughter standing outside the postmortem centre. My wife’s body was lying inside.”

For 55-year-old Arjun Singh, a vegetable seller, tragedy has struck twice in the last few years. In 2024, Arjun lost his second son in a train accident. And on March 31, he lost his wife in the stampede.

Nine family members had gone to the temple at around 7:30 a.m., he says. At the entrance of the sanctum, there was a pothole, Arjun recalls. “We did not see it as we were looking ahead. As soon as we stepped in, more than a hundred people fell over us.”

He adds, “For almost an hour, we were in pain. Nobody came to help. My wife died on my lap.” Arjun has filed a First Information Report against the temple priest for allegedly allowing entry in exchange for money.

“Had the police or temple management made proper arrangements, many lives would have been saved and the incident could have been avoided,” asserts Arjun, a father of five.

The aftermath

While nine people died in the incident, 12 others were injured and admitted to Sadar hospital.

Priti Devi, 30, who is recovering from injuries, says the temple is located on a narrow lane lined with shops selling flowers and prasad, which delayed the ambulance from reaching the site.

Mukesh Kumar, a resident of the area, says those who fainted were first taken to a nearby Urban Health and Wellness Centre.

Injured devotees undergoing treatment at the Biharsharif Sadar Hospital in Nalanda.
| Photo Credit:
Amit Bhelari

Auxiliary Nurse Midwife Sumitra Sinha, 45, who was on duty at the centre, says at least 12 people were brought in. “One woman was brought dead,” she says. “For the others, we checked blood pressure, provided ORS (oral rehydration solution), water, and administered CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation ) where needed.”

Pankaj Kumar, whose sister Anushka Sinha, is also hospitalised, says he was able to withstand the pressure of the crowd, but his sister could not. Before the stampede, there was not a single policeman around, he says. “After an hour of the stampede occurring, hundreds of policemen reached the site.”

Another resident of the area, Alok Ranjan (46), alleges that most of the police had been deployed in Rajgir. They had been sent there for the visit of President Droupadi Murmu, who had arrived to attend Nalanda University’s convocation. Later, Murmu expressed her condolences and prayed for the speedy recovery of the injured.

Soon after the stampede, several senior government officials visited the spot, including Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) Vinay Kumar; Nalanda Superintendent of Police (SP) Bharat Soni; District Magistrate Kundan Kumar; Inspector General (Central Range), Patna, Jitendra Rana; and Director General (Operations) Kundan Krishnan.

Following reports of security lapses in their area, Soni suspended Deep Nagar SHO Rajmani and four other police officers. The government also set up a Special Investigation Team to probe the incident.

On March 31 night, the police conducted raids and arrested four temple priests — Anuj Kumar, Awadhesh Kumar Mishra, Vivekanand Pandey, and Niranjan Kumar Pandey. They have been charged under Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which deals with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and have been sent to judicial custody.

So far, 40 people have been booked in the case for violating security norms and alleged mismanagement during the religious gathering. However, locals claim that several of those booked were not present at the site during the stampede.

Crowd management concerns

Locals and officials say poor crowd control was a major reason for the incident.

“The temple management should have anticipated the overcrowding and taken special care,” says one resident. “The structure should have been built to channel the crowd safely.”

Bihar DGP Vinay Kumar says, “As soon as I got information about the stampede, I rushed to the site and inspected the premises. We found many lapses. Even a crowd of 1,000 people would have been difficult to manage. That day, there were around 10,000 people.” He adds that the temple’s structure was not adequate for large gatherings and recommended a security audit for temples where large crowds assemble.

Initial investigations too have found inadequate crowd management and poor arrangements to be the reasons for the tragic incident. The chairperson of the Bihar State Religious Trusts Board, Ranvir Nandan, visited the temple the day after the incident and admitted that there were lapses on the part of the temple management.

“It is the duty of the temple management to hold discussions and chalk out a plan to manage crowds before any large religious gathering. I will ensure that this temple is registered under the Board, which will look after the temple management,” Nandan says. According to 2025 data, the Board monitors nearly 2,500 registered temples and trusts. The Board has also identified 2,512 unregistered temples and mutts in Bihar.

After the incident, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced ₹6 lakh for victims’ families — ₹4 lakh from the Disaster Management Department and ₹2 lakh from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also expressed his condolences and announced ₹2 lakh in financial aid to be paid to the families from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund, and ₹50,000 to the injured.

All the affected families have received ₹6 lakh each from the District Magistrate’s office after postmortem reports confirmed that the deaths were due to compressive asphyxia.

Dinesh Rajak, who lost his wife, says he would save the compensation he has received, for his youngest daughter’s marriage.

Incidents like these have happened before in Bihar. On November 19, 2012, as many as 22 people were killed at Adalatganj Ghat in Patna during the Chhath festival. A stampede at Gandhi Maidan in Patna claimed 33 lives during the post-Ravan Vadh programme on October 3, 2014, and three people died in a stampede at Begusarai’s Simaria Ghat on November 4, 2017.

The day after the 2026 incident, devotees remained undeterred though the crowd was smaller than usual at the Sheetla Mata temple.

Sushma Kumari, 45, who came to offer prayers on April 1, says, “I heard about the tragic incident in which several women were killed at the temple, but I could not stop myself from visiting. They all died on the lap of Sheetla Mata. I will pray for their souls.”