TIRUPATI: A day after the worst ever stampede in Tirupati in recent times, the Andhra Pradesh government on Thursday ordered a judicial inquiry to find out the exact reason that led to the tragic death of six devotees and injuries to around 40 others, and suggest measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
The government also punished five senior officials of the police department and Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, which controls the Lord Venkateswara temple atop the Tirumala hills, for negligence and dereliction of duty. While two officers were suspended, three were transferred. CM Chandrababu Naidu visited the temple town.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who visited the temple town to assess first-hand the tragedy on the eve of Vaikunta Ekadasiannounced ex gratia of Rs 25 lakh each to the family members of the deceased. Each of the injured will receive Rs 2 lakh as compensation. The CM detained the TTD officials and police officers for lack of planning and crowd management. The CM also interacted with the injured and consoled the families of the deceased devotees.
Did opening the door to let an old woman out cause a tragedy?
AP CM Chandrababu Naidu visited the temple town for a first-hand assessment of the tragedy on the eve of Vaikunta Ekadasi, announced ex gratia of Rs 25 lakh each to the family members of the deceased. Each of the injured will receive Rs 2 lakh as compensation. The CM detained the TTD officials and police officers for lack of planning and crowd management.
Preliminary investigation indicated that a senior police officer opened the main gate of the park, where makeshift queues had been set up, to allow an elderly devotee to leave after she complained of health problems. The ill-planned opening of the gate caused a sudden surge of devotees, who by then had been waiting for over 12 hours, towards the gate, causing the stampede.
Officials clarified Thursday that the stampede was not the result of the gate opening to issue tokens before the scheduled time. TTD had earlier announced that it would issue tokens for free darshan from 5 am on Thursday. Thousands of worshipers stood in long queues from 8 a.m. on Wednesday, 21 hours before the scheduled opening of the token issuance counters. However, following the stampede around 8:03 p.m. on Wednesday, officials began issuing tokens around 11:00 p.m. It continued till 10 am on Thursday, when the overall darshan quota of 1.2 lakh tokens was completed.
The state government suspended DSP Ramana Kumar and TTD dairy farm director Haranadh Reddy for dereliction of duty. Naidu, who reviewed the situation with senior TTD officials, acknowledged the failure of Tirupati SP L Subba Rayudu, TTD vigilance and security chief S Sreedhar and joint executive officer Gouthami, and ordered their immediate transfer.