Fire at camp in Maha Kumbh Mela, none hurt

Mahakumbh Nagar: A fire broke out at the ISKCON camp in Mahakumbh Nagar on Friday and quickly spread to over a dozen nearby camps, leaving them gutted, officials said. No casualties have been reported. Chief Fire Officer Pramod Sharma told PTI that the blaze was reported at 10.35 am after which around a dozen water tenders were rushed to the spot. “Upon receiving information about the fire at the ISKCON camp in Sector 18, fire tenders were immediately dispatched.

The fire was contained fully in half an hour,” he said. The fire spread to over a dozen nearby camps, causing significant damages. Officials said the cause of the fire and the damage incurred due to it were being ascertained.

DIG (Maha Kumbh) Vaibhav Krishna said the fire incident has “completely been controlled” by the fire brigades. “There is no one injured in it,” he posted on X. ISKCON’s camp was highlighted for its mega community kitchen being run in association with the Adani Foundation at Sector 19. Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani and his family also visited Maha Kumbh in January, distributing free meals to pilgrims and offered prayers at Sangam. Officials here said, the Friday fire took place at ISKCON’s other camp in Sector 18, some distance away from its Sector 19 camp. This is the third major fire at the Maha Kumbh besides multiple minor such incidents.

Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai on Friday claimed that hundreds of people died in the January 29 stampede at the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj, alleging that the Uttar Pradesh government is hiding the correct figures to cover up its failure. While the Uttar Pradesh government put the toll in the stampede at 30 dead and 60 injured, the opposition parties have been claiming that the actual figures were higher.

Speaking to reporters here, Ajay Rai said, “Hundreds of people died in the stampede in Kumbh due to mismanagement on the intervening night of January 28 and 29. Thousands of people were injured while thousands went missing.

“The Uttar Pradesh government is so insensitive that it has not yet released a correct list of the missing and the dead. People are running from door to door in search of their loved ones. The Yogi (Adityanath) government is hiding the correct figures to cover up its failure.” He also alleged that the last rites of many of the victims were not performed as per their religious beliefs. “Some bodies were thrown into the Ganga, some were picked up by bulldozers, some were cremated anonymously in electric crematoriums while some bodies are still lying in garbage heaps. Perhaps this is the height of insensitivity,” Ajay Rai said.

Referring to the death of sub-inspector Anjani Kumar Rai, the Congress leader claimed that the officer, a resident of Ghazipur, “died while performing his duty during the stampede that day”. “The chaos was such that even this brave policeman did not get an ambulance on time. And the irony is that the government is not even ready to accept that Anjani Kumar Rai died in the stampede,” he said, adding that talking to his family members revealed the “inhuman face” of the Uttar Pradesh government, and how the ambulance to carry Anjani Rai’s body was made available only after a long wait of 11 hours.