Allahabad: On Day One of the Maha Kumbh Mela 2013, the security forces emerged winners. With nearly 10 million people at the 193.5 hectare sprawling mela campus, 15,000 police personnel kept a hawk’s eye on every inch of the land and helped people and the lost ones to find their bearings.
With more than two companies of Jal Police, 72 companies of Central Para-military Forces and hundreds drawn from the civil and armed police of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, 200 commandos of the Rapid Action Force (RAF), anti-terrorist squads, anti-mine squads, sniffer dogs and a host of other specialised security men, the possibility of a stampede was averted here mid-noon Monday, officials said.
“With the skies opening up and the sun dazzling, many devouts and their families sat on the banks of the Ganga and the Yamuna rivers even as a surge of faithfuls was allowed to move in by mistake,” said a senior official.
The surging crowds were spotted on some of the 85 CCTV cameras dotting the mela premises. To control the crowd, Additional Director-General (ADG) Law and Order Arun Kumar rushed to the control room and the Uttarakhand Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) was pressed into service to control the crowd.
With a background and experience in handling the Kumbh rush — Haridwar in Uttarakhand hosted the 2010 Ardh Kumbh — the PAC was asked to “flush out the excess crowd”. Police officials heaved a sigh of relief when the 10 lakh people on the banks of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers moved out, giving room to the crowds that took to the chilly waters of the Ganga.
The Maha Kumbh area functions as an independent district and 12,000 police constables, 107 traffic inspectors, 12 additional superintendents of police, 16 assistant superintendents of police and 50 deputy superintendents of police lead the security network apart from the central police forces who will watch every inch of space in this area.
Admitting that crowd management was the “biggest challenge”, Kumar told IANS that “the security set-up had passed the first litmus test fairly well”.
A.C. Chamoli, one of the policemen at the VVIP ghats at Sangam, told IANS that they were “trained in crowd management” to easily “tackle a crowd of over a lakh in one go by the coordinated blowing of whistles”. Another policeman, R.P. Bhadola, said that by his estimates more than 50 lakh people had taken a holy dip in the Ganga by noon.
Deoli Singh, an ageing widow who came alone from Fazalika in Punjab, said she was thankful to the policemen for making her reach Sangam safely. “I travelled all alone but was helped by policemen at Allahabad railway station. They helped me with the luggage and also hitched me a ride in an auto rickshaw,” she said.
The huge gathering brings with it fears of a stampede. During the 1986 Ardh Kumbh in Hardiwar, 60 people were killed in a stampede. Senior Superintendent of Police (Kumbh) R.K. Rathore admits that this was a “big fear” but added that police at the ghats were “well trained in segregating people in a set period of time and adequately managing space”.
A seven-tier system is in place to secure the entire Maha Kumbh area, said Inspector General of Police Alok Sharma.
By the time the sun set over the Ganga Monday, rough estimates suggested that more than one crore people had taken a holy dip in the river. With no major ontoward incident on the first and crucial bathing day, police got the first pat on their backs.
Soon after the bathing was over, ADG Arun Kumar visited the residential quarters of the police personnel to congratulate them.