OOn March 23, when the Bihar School Examination Board results for Class 12 were announced, Kundan Kumar, a 20-year-old resident of Mathurapur village in Bihar’s Noorsarai town, was elated. He had secured 65% which meant he had reached the first division. His mother Rekha Devi (45) was also delighted and handed him ₹1,000 to buy new books. A few days later, the family visited the Sheetla Mata temple in Maghra village in Nalanda district, about 10 kilometers away, to offer prayers and celebrate Kundan’s success.
According to temple priest Shubham Kumar, 30, Sheetla Mata in Hinduism is considered an avatar of the goddess Durga as mentioned in the religious text Skanda Purana. Spread over 1.5 acres, the temple attracts devotees who believe that bathing in the cool waters of its pond can help cure skin ailments.
On March 31, the day Kundan’s family went to the temple, the crowd grew rapidly. It was the last Tuesday of the month of Chaitra in the Hindu calendar, which is considered an important day for spiritual practices, especially the worship of Goddess Durga. Locals say that 500-1000 devotees visit the temple on any normal day. However, according to the police, more than 10,000 people gathered for special prayers that day.
This sudden surge led to a stampede between 9.30am and 10am that claimed nine lives, including that of Rekha Devi. Eight were female and one unidentified male. Most of the victims were from Nalanda.
Rekha Devi’s daughter, 24-year-old Sharmila Kumari, who got married last month, also accompanied her mother to the temple.
“My mother was the one who took care of us because our father is mentally ill,” says Sharmila. “He has been undergoing treatment at the Central Institute of Psychiatry (in Kanke, Ranchi) for the last decade.” After the incident, he fears not only for his father, but also for his two younger brothers.
Kundan presses the new books to his chest and cries. “My mother always encouraged me to study and become a great civil servant so that our financial burden would be reduced,” he says. “All she did was go to pray. She never came back.”
Kundan’s biggest regret is not being inside the temple; he was standing outside when the incident occurred.
Anatomy of a crush
Sharmila, her husband Vijendra Kumar, Rekha Devi and Kundan reached the temple around 8:30 in the morning, recalls Sharmila. They bought flowers for the puja and joined the crowd.
Sharmila says there was no proper queue. Only she and her mother entered the temple, while her brother and husband remained outside. Although men are allowed to enter the temple, it is usually women who come to worship.
At 9:30 they finally entered. Within minutes, chaos ensued. She saw people pushing each other. Then someone shouted, “Mar gayi, mar gayi (She’s dead, she’s dead).
“People started falling over each other,” says Sharmila. “My mother also collapsed. I didn’t understand what was happening. There were hundreds of people around me and everyone was shouting the names of the people they were with.”
She lost sight of her mother in the melee. “People pushed me into a corner, but my mother stayed in the middle of the crowd,” he says.
After some time, she started looking for her mother near the exit. At that time, Kundan found his sister.
About half an hour later, local residents and devotees started pulling out the bodies lying inside the temple premises just a few meters away from the inner sanctum. Among them was Rekha Devi. She was taken on a scooter to Biharsharif Sadar Hospital, about 6 km away, as no ambulance had arrived. “The doctors declared her dead,” says Sharmila.
Sharmila is as saddened as she is angry. He says there was not a single police officer in sight either inside or outside the temple to handle the crowd.
They also claim that the temple priest was taking money from devotees and allowing them to enter through the exit gate. “It also blocked the exit gate,” he says.
Trapped inside
Punam, who went to the temple with her mother, claims that when chaos broke out, the authorities closed the gates and erected bamboo barricades, which worsened the situation. They claim that both the entrance and the exit were blocked.
She went to celebrate her 63% score in the Bihar School Board Examination. “My mother promised we would visit the temple if I passed with the first division. I lost her within minutes,” he says.
Dinesh Rajak lost his wife Ritu Devi (50) in the stampede. The father of six and a resident of Sakunat locality in Biharsharif came to know about the incident only two hours later.
Dinesh, who earns a living by walking from one village to another selling spices, says his wife and daughter went to the temple that day without mobile phones. “I got a call from an unknown number around 12:30 (in the afternoon),” he says. “I heard my daughter crying. She told me that her mother fainted in the temple and was taken to Sadar Hospital.”
He hurried there. “I found my daughter standing outside the mortuary center. Inside was my wife’s body.”
Fifty-five-year-old Arjun Singh, a vegetable vendor, has been struck by tragedy twice in recent years. In 2024, Arjun lost his second son in a train accident. And on March 31, he lost his wife in a stampede.
Nine members of the family went to the temple around 7:30 am, he says. Arjun recalls that there was a pothole at the entrance of the shrine. “We didn’t see it when we looked ahead. As soon as we entered, more than a hundred people fell over us.”
He adds: “We were in pain for almost an hour. No one came to help. My wife died on my lap.” Arjun filed a first information report against the temple priest for allegedly allowing entry in exchange of money.
“Many lives would have been saved and the incident could have been avoided if the police or the temple management had taken proper action,” asserts Arjun, a father of five.
Aftermath
While nine people died in the incident, 12 others were injured and admitted to Sadar Hospital.
Priti Devi, 30, who is recovering from her injuries, says the temple is located in a narrow lane lined with shops selling flowers and prasad, which delayed an ambulance from reaching the spot.
Mukesh Kumar, a resident of the area, says those who fainted were first taken to the nearby city health and wellness centre.
Injured devotees undergoing treatment at 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. “One woman was brought in dead,” he says. “For others, we checked their blood pressure, provided ORS (oral rehydration solution), water and performed CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) if necessary.
Pankaj Kumar, whose sister Anushka Sinha is also hospitalized, says he was able to withstand the pressure of the crowd, but his sister was not. There wasn’t a single police officer around before the stampede, he says. “After an hour of the stampede, hundreds of police arrived at the scene.”
Another resident of the area, Alok Ranjan, 46, says most of the police have been deployed in Rajgir. They were sent there to visit President Droupadi Murma, who had come to attend the convocation of Nalanda University. She later expressed her condolences to Murmu and prayed for the speedy recovery of the injured.
Soon after the stampede, several senior government officials visited the site, 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 General Manager (Operations) Kundan Krishnan.
Following reports of a security lapse in their area, Soni suspended Deep Nagar SHO Rajmani and four other police officers. The government has also set up a special investigation team to probe the incident.
On the night of March 31, police raided and arrested four temple priests — Anuj Kumar, Awadhesh Kumar Mishra, Vivekanand Pandey and Niranjan Kumar Pandey. They were charged under Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Act, 2023, which deals with killing not amounting to murder, and sent to judicial custody.
So far, 40 people have been charged in the case for violating safety norms and allegedly misbehaving during a religious gathering. However, locals claim that several reserved ones were not on site during the stampede.
Fear of crowd control
Locals and officials say poor crowd control was the main reason behind the incident.
“The temple management should have expected overcrowding and taken special care,” says one of the residents. “The structure should have been built to safely direct the crowd.”
Bihar DGP Vinay Kumar says, “As soon as I got information about the stampede, I rushed to the spot and inspected the premises. We found many defects. Even a crowd of 1,000 people would have been difficult to handle. There were around 10,000 people there that day.” He adds that the structure of the temple was not suitable for large gatherings and recommended a security audit for temples where large crowds gather.
The initial investigation also found that inadequate crowd control and poor precautions were the cause of the tragic incident. Bihar State Religious Trust Board Chairman Ranvir Nandan visited the temple a day after the incident and admitted that there had been misconduct on the part of the temple management.
“It is the duty of the temple management to hold discussions and write a crowd management plan before any big religious gathering. I will ensure that this temple is registered under a board of trustees who will look after the management of the temple,” says Nandan. According to 2025 figures, the supervisory board monitors nearly 2,500 registered temples and trusts. The board also identified 2,512 unregistered temples and mutts in Bihar.
Following the incident, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced ₹6 crore for the families of the victims – ₹4 lakh from the Disaster Management Department and ₹2,000 from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also expressed his condolences and announced a financial assistance of ₹2,000 to be paid to the families from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund and ₹50,000 to the injured.
All the affected families received ₹ 6 lakh each from the district magistrate’s office after postmortem reports confirmed that the deaths were due to compression asphyxia.
Dinesh Rajak, who lost his wife, says he would save the compensation he received for his youngest daughter’s marriage.
Similar incidents have already happened in Bihar. On 19 November 2012, as many as 22 people were killed at Adalatganj Ghat in Patna during the Chhath festival. A stampede at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan claimed 33 lives during the post-Ravan Vadh program on 3 October 2014, and three people died in a stampede at Begusarai’s Simaria Ghat on 4 November 2017.
The day after the 2026 incident, the devotees were undeterred even though the crowd was smaller than usual at the Sheetla Mata temple.
Sushma Kumari, 45, who came to pray on April 1, says, “I heard about the tragic incident in which several women were killed in 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.”
