Three killed, over a dozen hospitalized as crowd surges at eastern India Hindu festival

Three killed, over a dozen hospitalized as crowd surges at eastern India Hindu festival
Hindu devotees pull a chariot carrying the idols of Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra during the Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra, an annual religious procession on June 27, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 29 June 2025

Three killed, over a dozen hospitalized as crowd surges at eastern India Hindu festival

Three killed, over a dozen hospitalized as crowd surges at eastern India Hindu festival
  • Autopsies are planned for the deceased to determine the exact cause of death
  • Coastal temple town of Puri comes alive each year with the grand ‘Rath Yatra’

NEW DELHI: Three people were killed and more than a dozen hospitalized Sunday following a sudden crowd surge at a popular Hindu festival in eastern India, a senior government official said.

“There was a sudden crowd surge of devotees for having a glimpse of the Hindu deities during which few people either fainted, felt suffocated or complained of breathlessness,” said Siddharth Shankar Swain, the top government official in Puri.

Swain said that 15 people were rushed to a local government hospital, where three people were pronounced dead and the other 12 were discharged. Autopsies are planned for the deceased to determine the exact cause of death.

Tens of thousands of devotees gathered in the coastal town early Sunday at Shree Gundicha Temple near the famous Jagannatha Temple to catch a glimpse of the deities onboard three chariots, Swain said.

The coastal temple town of Puri comes alive each year with the grand “Rath Yatra,” or chariot festival, in one of the world’s oldest and largest religious processions. The centuries-old festival involves Hindu deities being taken out of the temple and driven in colorfully decorated chariots.

The festival is one of Hinduism’s most revered events and draws hundreds of thousands of devotees annually from across India and the world.


Mexico President Sheinbaum presses charges after street harassment

Mexico President Sheinbaum presses charges after street harassment
Updated 4 sec ago

Mexico President Sheinbaum presses charges after street harassment

Mexico President Sheinbaum presses charges after street harassment
Sheinbaum used her daily press briefing to say that she had pressed charges against the man
Sheinbaum said she felt a responsibility to press charges, because if not, where would that leave Mexican women?

MEXICO CITY: What should have been a five-minute time-saving walk from Mexico’s National Palace to the Education Ministry for President Claudia Sheinbaum has become a stomach-churning viral moment after a video captured a drunk man groping the president.
The brief clip has given the daily harassment and assaults that women suffer in Mexico their highest-profile platform. And on Wednesday, Sheinbaum used her daily press briefing to say that she had pressed charges against the man.
She also called on states to look at their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults and said Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear, no, women’s personal space must not be violated.”
Sheinbaum said she felt a responsibility to press charges, because if not, where would that leave Mexican women? “If this is done to the president, what is going to happen to all of the young women in our country?”
Indeed, if Mexico’s president cannot be in the street for five minutes without a man approaching her from behind, putting his hands on her body and leaning in for a kiss, then it’s not difficult to imagine what women with hours-long commutes on public transportation are experiencing daily.
“I decided to press charges because this is something that I experienced as a woman, but that we as women experience in our country,” she said.
She said she had similar experiences of harassment when she was 12 years old and using public transportation to get to school. As president, she said, she felt like she had a responsibility to all women.
Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada had announced overnight that the man had been arrested.
The incident immediately raised questions about the president’s security, but Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people.
She explained that she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to save time. She said they could walk it in five minutes, rather than taking a 20-minute car ride.
Brugada used some of Sheinbaum’s own language about being elected Mexico’s first woman president to emphasize that harassment of any woman – in this case Mexico’s most powerful – is an assault on all women.
When Sheinbaum was elected, she said that it wasn’t just her coming to power, it was all women. Brugada said that was “not a slogan, it’s a commitment to not look the other way, to not allow misogyny to continue to be veiled in habits, to not accept a single additional humiliation, not another abuse, not a single femicide more.”