'My daughter shouted mother save me' says India stampede survivor

The Star

Widow, Ranjani Kumari, lost her 21-year old daughter Sonam on Wednesday (Jan 29) in a pre-dawn stampede at the Maha Kumbh Mela in northern India.   WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00Widow Ranjani Kumari lost her 21-year-old daughter Sonam on Wednesday in a pre-dawn

00:08stampede at the Mahakumbh Mela in northern India.

00:28Kumari had come to pick up her daughter's remains from Motila Nehru Medical College

00:32morgue in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.

00:35Her husband died of a heart attack almost 12 years ago, and she raised her three daughters

00:40as a single mother.

00:42She worked hard to give her eldest daughter a bright future, and had high hopes for her.

01:05Dozens of people were killed in the stampede as tens of millions of Hindus gathered to

01:09take a dip in sacred river waters during six weeks of the festival.

01:14Distraught relatives queued up to identify those killed by the stampede, which triggered

01:18calls for authorities and politicians to be held accountable.

01:22Forty-year-old Jagwanti Rajgar lost her mother and sister-in-law in the crush, and said she

01:27was worried about her three nieces.

01:30Holding the youngest, she explains how her sister-in-law threw her over the crowd, begging

01:35them to save her as they bounced her to a safe place.

02:01Some witnesses spoke of a huge push that caused devotees to fall on each other, while

02:06others said closure of routes to the water brought the dense crowd to a standstill and

02:11caused people to collapse due to suffocation.

02:14By Tuesday, nearly 200 million people had attended the festival since it started two

02:19weeks ago, and that more than 57 million people had taken a holy dip.

02:31For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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