‘No woman left in my family now’: India’s Hathras mourns stampede victims

Crush at religious event kills at least 121 people, most of them women, whose relatives now seek justice as they consider a future without them.

Hathras, India – Vinod Kumar was away from home for work when he received a call informing him that his 70-year-old mother’s photo was circulating on social media, and that she was among dozens killed in a stampede at a religious event she was attending last week.

“I rushed home and as soon as I reached, I asked for my wife’s whereabouts and no one knew. I asked for my daughter. She is nine or 10 years old,” Kumar, who sells leather and rexine bags for a living, told Al Jazeera, wiping tears from his face. “She was nowhere to be found, either.”

All three were confirmed dead, their bodies found at different hospitals in Hathras, a small town in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh, about 200km (125 miles) southeast of the national capital, New Delhi, and the neighbouring Agra district.

“I am devastated. I lost my mother, wife and daughter. No woman is left in my family now. I am now left with my three sons,” he said.

Kumar’s family members were among at least 121 people who died in the stampede as the devotees, most of them women, surged towards a Hindu preacher who was addressing a crowd of nearly 250,000 people under a giant tent in Hathras district’s Phulrai Mughal Garhi village.

More than 100 were wounded. Clothes and footwear of the dead and injured devotees lay strewn in rainwater on the ground where the event was held.

Authorities said the preacher, Suraj Pal Singh, a former police constable known in the region as Bhole Baba, only had permission for 80,000 people.

The key organiser, Devprakash Madhukar, surrendered to the police last week and has been charged with