Rescue workers yeterday began the task of searching through debris for anyone missing after a stampede and fire that killed as many as 300 people at a temple in western India. The official death toll was 267, although police said the number of dead may rise. Subrao Patil, the top district official, told Reuters 194 bodies had been identified, more than half of them women. Crowds of people on an annual pilgrimage to the temple continued to arrive yesterday from villages too remote to have heard news of the stampede.

District officials tried to get the word out to stop devotees from hampering relief efforts, although the temple remained open. The stampede broke out on Tuesday as 300,000 people converged on the Mandher Devi temple, on a hilltop near Wai, about 260 km southeast of Bombay in the western state of Maharashtra.

Witnesses said it started around midday after pilgrims slipped on the temple’s steep stone steps, which were wet with coconut water spilled from fruit presented as offerings to the local goddess, Kalubai. Fire then swept through roadside stalls selling flowers, sweets and food, and officials said it may have been caused by a short circuit. “Our initial focus is on the relief work and only after the official enquiry is completed can we say with certainty what the exact sequence of events was,” one police officer said.

Scores were crushed to death on the steep and narrow hill path leading to the temple, and many bodies were charred. The remains of the tin-roofed food stalls still smouldered near the temple and adjoining settlement on a craggy hilltop about 1,200 metres high.

Dishevelled and mangled bodies lay in lines, many covered in the green saris that are traditionally offered to Kalubai. The chief minister of Maharashtra visited the site, announcing compensation of 100,000 Indian rupees ($ 2,280) for the dead and 10,000 rupees for the injured. An inquiry has been ordered.

The 300-year-old Mandher Devi temple is popular among lower caste Hindus who undertake the pilgrimage every January on a full-moon day and participate in a 24-hour-long festival that includes ritual animal sacrifices to the goddess. In 2003, more than 32 people died at a stampede in Nasik, another town in Maharashtra, during the Kumbh Mela, or Grand Pitcher festival.

<B>Punit Paranjpe</B>