On Could 2, Sonia Nandadurgi’s son, Sagar Shivkumar Nandadurgi, 31, a devotee of Goddess Lairai, boarded a bus with six associates from Piligao village to Shirgao village, 13 kilometres away. Right here, in north Goa’s Bicholim taluka, is the Shree Lairai Devi temple, the place yearly in April or Could, folks flock for rituals that culminate within the lighting of a bonfire from which coals are raked and devotees referred to as dhonds stroll over.

Waving to his mom and uncles, he promised to be house the following morning after strolling on agnidivya (embers). The subsequent morning, at 6 a.m., Sagar’s three uncles learnt from their neighbours that he and 5 others had died in a stampede on the temple.

Sagar’s funeral rites had been carried out on Could 3. Since then, politicians and State administration officers have been streaming into the two-room home, providing their condolences. On Could 4, the Governor of Goa, P.S. Sreedharan Pillai, visited the household. Sagar’s uncle and neighbour, Sainath Kavlekar, 45, says till Could 9, the household had not acquired the postmortem report.

A devotee’s mom weeps

Sixty-year-old Sonia’s house is surrounded by jackfruit, cashew, coconut, and mango timber. There’s a tulsi planted in a mound of purple earth on the entrance. The home was kuccha; Sagar had not too long ago plastered it with cement, she says.

Relations who reside within the space say he needed to color the home and in addition exchange the tin-sheet roof with a pucca one. At house, surrounding an anachronistic TV set on a picket desk are the various awards that Sagar had gained at school, faculty, and at work for his efficiency. His spectacles, workplace bag, and medals all grasp from partitions and doorways. Sagar had labored for Tirumala Financial institution’s mortgage restoration division, the steady job serving to him and his mom construct a greater monetary life.

Sonia had misplaced her husband when Sagar was only a toddler. She had introduced Sagar up by doing odd jobs through the years. She refuses to eat or drink water. “Why did you (the Goddess) take my son, my solely son, my entire life,” she asks in Konkani, sobbing. “What’s the objective of my life with out him?”

Overcrowding and a stampede

On the intervening night time of Could 2 and three, an estimated one lakh folks or extra — as per temple authorities and the administration — had gathered between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. to supply prayers and stroll on embers on the temple. There is just one concrete, steep street going in the direction of the temple, broad sufficient just for a lorry to go.

Rupesh Rajput, 35, a dhond from Bicholim city, recounts the chaotic scenes that unfolded that day. “I suffered a minor harm. I’m fortunate to be alive,” he says. “At about 2 (within the morning) what I noticed was distressing. A gaggle of dhonds had been taking part in with the beth (canes dhonds carry, additionally used within the rituals inside the temple). They pushed folks in entrance of them. There was a rope that divided the dhonds from the common devotees. Inside minutes, not less than seven queues had been shaped, and the dividing rope was gone,” he says. That precipitated the chaos that led to the stampede, he says.

Sagar was rushed to the neighborhood well being centre in Bicholim, the place he was declared ‘introduced useless’, says Kavlekar. “His associates informed us that he was pushed by different dhonds and fell on the pavement. He was crushed by the group. He was such a mild and sort man,” he says.

Additionally learn | Goa stampede: Fact-finding committee begins probe into incident; Governor meets victims’ kin

Quickly after the incident, 74 folks had been admitted within the Goa Medical School and Hospital (GMCH) in Bambolim, the Asilo Hospital in Mapusa, and in neighborhood well being centres at Sankhali and Bicholim. 9 injured folks stay admitted in GMCH, of which 4 are on ventilator help.

Dr. Rajesh T. Patil, the medical superintendent at GMCH, says many suffered extreme a number of fractures within the ribs. “Two sufferers have extreme head accidents with cerebral hypoxia (when the mind is starved of oxygen). This can be a severe complication that happens after a chest harm,” he says. GMCH has been conducting psychological well being classes for households and survivors, he provides.

On Could 3, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant introduced the switch of 5 senior officers within the administration. He additionally introduced an ex-gratia compensation of ₹10 lakh to every household of the deceased and ₹1 lakh every to those that had suffered severe accidents. Sainath says nobody from the administration has reached out to them concerning the compensation.

The street to the temple

In the course of the temple competition, there’s a build-up of stalls promoting every little thing from flowers to toys, at Wadacha Wada hamlet in Shirgao, the place the stampede occurred, a few kilometre from the temple. Now, there are only a few stalls promoting puja necessities, however the scent of jasmine lingers within the air.

A fabric service provider says his stall was vandalised by the group, however he’s grateful to have survived the stampede. “I used to be holding on to a bamboo pole that I had put as much as make the stall. Very quickly, all of the 4 bamboo helps had been introduced on the bottom. The garments on the market had been run over,” he says, refusing to be named. He provides that there was no police presence on the spot.

Regardless of the stampede the earlier night time, devotees proceed to throng the temple the next days, however temple authorities have turned off the music. The accident spot is comparatively quiet. Footwear, heaps of beths, jasmine, purses, wallets, and items of torn garments remained on the perimeters of the road.

Residents within the hilly space, whose porches had been taken over by the group, say they had been terrified to get up to sounds of ambulances and screaming. Ravina Madgaonkar (48), who lives together with her husband and two kids, says that yearly, folks come to their porch to attend or simply lie all the way down to relaxation. This 12 months there have been way more folks, and the corners of their compound partitions are damaged.

“My 22-year-old son has been a dhond for the previous seven years. He managed to return house, however he had a tricky time stepping into the home as folks had been sitting proper outdoors our closed doorways,” says Madgaonkar.

The grief of a husband and uncle

Aditya Ankush Kauthankar (16) had accompanied his aunt Tanuja Shyamsundar Kirtankar (51) and his cousin Ritika (15), all of them dhonds. Seeing his aunt and cousin unable to rise up, he rushed to assist them, however was himself crushed within the chaos, says Ritika, who survived. He and his aunt had been introduced useless to the Mapusa district hospital.

“It was sheer luck that somebody dragged Ritika out and put her into an ambulance,” says her father, Shyamsundar Kauthankar (60), who misplaced his spouse. Ritika suffered accidents in her leg and wears a short lived brace. The household lives lower than 10 kilometres from right here, and Shyamsundar is a development employee.

“I’m nervous about how I’ll take her to highschool to jot down her class 9 paper. The varsity has not agreed to provide her any aid,” says Shyamsundar. He was knowledgeable concerning the incident by his older daughter, who was ready close to the homkhand, the pile of wooden that was to be torched.

Ritika all the time imitated her mom, who had been a dhond since she was a toddler, says Shyamsundar, who has all the time feared crowds. “If Aditya and Tanuja had been taken in an ambulance as an alternative of a police van, they might have survived. How did the State authorities enable stalls on each side of such a slender street, that too on a slope? Till final 12 months, the police used to launch dhonds and devotees in batches of 15 to 25 at a time. This 12 months, there was no administration,” he says.

Aditya’s mom is a home assist and father a taxi driver. Aditya had simply handed his class 10 board examinations, and his sister is in school 8. The household is in shock and can’t communicate. “He was so excited to review in school 11 that he had stored his newly stitched uniform, socks and sneakers prepared for the brand new time period,” says Shyamsundar.

Arun Desai, assistant sub-inspector, Bicholim police station, says the group has solely grown every year, and it has change into a mammoth activity for the police to deal with. “Devotees from Goa and neighbouring Maharashtra and Karnataka began coming from early within the morning on Could 2. By the night time, the group was an excessive amount of for the police to deal with.”

Religion and devotion

The Lairai Devi annual jatra (pilgrimage), also called the Shirgao jatra is centuries previous, says Dinanath Gaonkar (69), president and priest of the temple committee.

On the 2,700-square-metre premises, devotees submit their needs to Lairai, who’s one among eight siblings who made Goa their house, as per legend. Lairai’s sister Mirai was adopted by the Portuguese, who christened her Milagres (milagre is Portuguese for miracle). Oil for the temple competition comes from the church of that title in Mapusa, says Gaonkar.

“Think about all of the dhonds should full the fireplace stroll between 2 and 6 within the morning,” he says. The Mahajans (hereditary male descendants of the temple’s founders) imagine that the Goddess Lairai then walks to the chavata, an area about 200 metres from the homkund, the place she rests.

After this ritual, at 3.30 p.m., prasadam, consisting of patkali (ixora) and kodu (bottle gourd) flowers, is served. “Lairai Devi is our protector of water and forest sources, which we as soon as had in abundance,” says Gaonkar.

The world has seen heavy mining of iron ore, he provides. “Since 2008, we now have filed a number of petitions in numerous courts to limit mining operations. At present 270 hectares of land is with the mining firms,” he says, including that the State authorities has been laborious on the temple due to this opposition.

State authorities say that in a gathering held on April 30, with the police and district administration, the temple committee was instructed to put in CCTV cameras and powerful barricades to segregate devotees from common guests, so queues can be higher regulated. A authorities official says this was a non-public occasion, making the organisers accountable.

Gaonkar counters that the State administration had didn’t do its job. “Earlier than the competition, the federal government had assured us of satisfactory police employees and preparations reminiscent of barricades, however on the day of the competition, the police was not even current,” he says. Permission for stalls outdoors the temple premises got by the federal government, he claims. There may be mounting strain on the temple committee handy over the temple and the competition, says Gaonkar. “In March the State authorities, with out consulting with us, declared Lairai jatra a State competition. The temple committee refused to just accept it.”

The temple comes below Goa’s Devasthan Regulation, 1933 — informally referred to as the Mahajani Act — which has ruled Hindu temples (devasthans) within the State since Portuguese rule. As much as 66.08% of Goa’s inhabitants is Hindu, as per the final census. “There are round 500 Mahajans who’re from Kshatriya Bhandari and Brahmin communities. We can’t hand over centuries of custom to the federal government, who has no thought how the temple capabilities.”

After the tragedy, the State authorities constituted a fact-finding committee headed by State Income Secretary Sandeep Jacques. The findings had been to be revealed on Could 9, however they’re now below the evaluation of the Chief Minister.