Why is UP government trying to hide the Kumbh death toll?

A public relations disaster is slowly turning into a political disaster for the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath as several media channels including BBC, TV9 Bharatvarsh and Dainik Bhaskar raise doubts that the toll is a lot higher.

Accounts filtering out of Ground Zero at the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj are claiming a much higher death-toll than officials are willing to concede yet. Distraught eyewitness accounts shared by them put the figure between a few hundred to a few thousand even as it is business as usual at the Kumbh.

The death toll, announced around 7 pm on 29 January has not moved till 7 pm on 2 February. This is unusual as it means that not a single one of the injured has succumbed in hospitals.

The government is going all out to ensure that the Kumbh continues uninterrupted. It laid out the red carpet for Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar after the tragedy and is preparing to do the same when the prime minister is due to visit on Wednesday, 5 February.

On Sunday, the media cell of the Samajwadi Party put out several videos to claim that the government has put a lid on the death toll for political reasons. While it stopped short of mentioning the Delhi assembly elections and byelection to the Milkipur seat in Ayodhya, the insinuation is that instructions are to hold back the actual number till polling gets over on 5 February.

The veil of secrecy, however, has been counterproductive as it has encouraged speculation that dead bodies are being secretly disposed of to ensure that Uttar Pradesh and chief minister Yogi Adityanath do not get a bad name.

Relatives of pilgrims who have been missing have alleged that dead bodies are being secretly buried so that the government does not have to pay any compensation. Several relatives of the pilgrims missing since 29 January are pleading that they do not want any compensation but just the dead bodies so that they can leave for home.

Relatives of at least one of them, Sia Devi from a village in Maner on the outskirts of Patna, have claimed on camera that after persistent pleas, officials handed over her dead body with a death certificate stating ‘brought dead’. They were also paid Rs 15,000 in cash. Sia Devi (70), they claimed, had never stepped out of the village during her lifetime till her fateful decision to accompany a group of women and a few men from the village for the pilgrimage of her lifetime.

One of the surviving women claimed that she too had fainted following the stampede but when she was regaining her senses, she heard a policeman say that there is another dead body which needed to be thrown into the river. She claimed that she heard a woman scolding the policemen and sprinkling water on her face to revive her.

In yet another video shared by the Samajwadi Party Media Cell on Sunday, 2 February, a young woman says she does not know what she is going to tell her mother back home after losing her father in the stampede. Two of her fellow travellers, both men, complain that they received no help and no information from officials at the Kumbh.

“They are only catering to VIPs and Gujaratis”, they can be heard saying in an even tone. “We are tired having walked up and down over the last few days and neither physically nor mentally are we in a position to put up with this trauma for much longer,” adds the woman.

Ironically, an influencer engaged by UP Tourism Department, Tania Mittal from Kanpur, to promote the Kumbh has provided damning evidence on the stampede, that she claims to have witnessed. She claims to have seen people dying even in the Haldiram outlet on the mela ground and to have rescued at least one hundred children.

The lady, who had shared videos of one of the so-called VIP ghats, which looked serene and quiet at night, also shared horrifying videos of stampedes. She also claimed that she had called up civil and police officials for help but no help was forthcoming.

In one of the several videos being shared on social media after the stampede, a police woman can be heard screaming to her superiors to rush reinforcements. “I cannot tell you on phone what has happened…sir, please send reinforcements…”, she pleaded.