Crowd chaos and confusion at site of tragedy

Reserved pathways and cordoned-off areas for eminent attendees have been a source of vehement complaint for reducing the amount of space for common pilgrims

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Journeying across India for the pinnacle celebration of the Hindu calendar, Laxmi and her family were sleeping by the roadside Wednesday as they waited to cleanse themselves in the sacred Ganges river.

All of a sudden they were violently roused in the middle of the night by police officers, who smacked them with wooden sticks and ordered them to clear a path for other pilgrims.

The officers were frantically trying to make way for a surging throng of devotees that would imminently spill over crowd control barriers and crush the dozing masses on the other side.

"A large crowd surged forward, pushing and trampling us," Laxmi, shell-shocked and huddled under a thick woollen shawl in the morning cold, told AFP. "In that chaos, my sister-in-law lost her life."