The Uttar Pradesh government has ordered a judicial probe into the deaths of at least 30 people in stampedes at India’s Kumbh Mela festival, where millions of Hindu devotees gathered for a ritual bath at the confluence of three sacred rivers.

A tragic stampede at the Kumbh Mela in Uttar Pradesh resulted in the deaths of at least four people, including a woman and her daughter from Belagavi. The state government has established a helpline for affected families,

Hundreds died in a stampede at the first Kumbh Mela in independent India in Allahabad in 1954 – a disaster caused by administrative miscalculations, poor crowd control, and infrastructural limitations.