Bodies of all Hathras stampede victims identified, handed over to relatives By Kishor Dwivedi

Hathras (Top):The bodies of all the victims of the Hathras stampede have been identified and handed over to their families, District Magistrate Ashish Kumar said on Thursday. A total of 121 people, mostly women, died and 31 were injured in the stampede that took place during the satsang of preacher Baba Bhole in Hathras. Hathras After the stampede, 21 bodies were taken to Agra, 28 to Etah, 34 to Hathras and 38 to Aligarh, officials said. “All the bodies have been identified and handed over (to the respective families),” Kumar told PTI on Thursday.

He said of the three bodies that were unidentified till Wednesday, two were identified late in the night and one through a video call on Thursday morning. “The last body was identified by the family through a video call. They are on their way to Aligarh hospital (to collect the body),” the district magistrate added. Kumar, a 2015-batch IAS officer who joined Hathras as DM barely a week before the stampede, said there were no reports of missing persons as of now. “We had deployed staff from the district administration to count the number of people who had gone to the event (‘satsang’) and returned,” he said.

THE Government of Uttar Pradesh The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday formed a three-member judicial commission headed by a retired high court judge to probe the Hathras tragedy, also looking into the possibility of a “conspiracy” behind the stampede. The panel will submit its report in two months. Police have filed an FIR against the organisers of the “satsang” near Phulhari village in Hathras, accusing them of cramming 2.5 lakh people into the venue despite having obtained permission for only 80,000. “Mukhya sevadar” Devprakash Madhukar and other organisers are named as the accused in the FIR lodged at Sikandra Rau police station on Tuesday evening.

The preacher, who goes by the name Jagat Guru Saakar Vishwahari Bhole Baba, is not on the list. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who visited Hathras on Wednesday and met the injured, was asked why the preacher was not named in the FIR as an accused. He said, “Prima facie, the case has been filed against those who sought permission to hold the event. Whoever is responsible for this will come under their jurisdiction.”