Stampede occurs in Dehradun’s parade ground during Dusshera celebrations
Traffic jams occur in many places in Dehradun on Dusshera
The police had been claiming full-fledged preparation for the Parade Ground Dussehra fair, but in the end when more than expected crowd turned up at Parade Ground all the planning went down the drain. The result was a panic in Parade Ground. Many women, including the elderly, were injured due to fall during the stampede.
As per eyewitness reports, the situation worsened when even the police started beating the people with sticks during alterations. At the same time, traffic management proved to be a failure of the police and as vehicles were reduced to crawling speed from city to highway. A large number of people gathered in Parade Ground to see the Dussehra fair and burning of Ravan.
After the ground was full, the Shobhayatra Parade reached the ground on behalf of the Kalika Mata temple and the entrance was blocked. During this, some youths started screaming around and shouting. During this time the policemen posted on the gate lost their temper and they started using force.
When the police tried to disperse the locals the situation became uncontrollable. Many people started fleeing in panic. Meanwhile, many people were injured on the ground due to a stampede like situation. Although the situation of the stampede was only a few minutes, if this situation had been of a longer duration there could have been a big accident.
When the crowds returning from the fair in Parade Ground came back, the entire exercise of traffic control failed. Traffic came to a near standstill till nine o’clock at night from Lansdowne Chowk, Buddha Chowk, Darshan Lal Chowk, Tehsil Chowk to clocktower, Rajpur Road and EC Road. This was the situation when the police was claiming to keep the traffic under control by creating a traffic plan two days back, but it was completely careless to implement it.
