The stampede on Bhole Baba’s ‘satsang’ on July 2 claimed the lives of 121 people in the Sikandararu area of Hathras.
Self-styled godman Bhole Baba said on Wednesday that he was deeply shocked by the stampede on Hathras but no one can escape what is destined and everyone has to die one day.
Honee ko kaun taal sakta hai (no one can escape what has to be done), he told PTI Videos, two weeks after 121 people were killed in a stampede at a satsang he was addressing.
Jo aaya hai use ek din for jaana bhi hai, bhale hee koi aagey peechey ho, he added. Loosely translated, this means that everyone has to die one day, only the time is not fixed.
Bhole Baba, also known as Narayan Sakar Hari, whose original name is Surajpal, also reiterated the claim he made earlier through his lawyer AP Singh that there was a conspiracy behind the stampede.
“After the July 2 incident, I was very depressed and upset. But no one can avoid what has to happen… What my lawyer and eyewitnesses said about the toxic spray is absolutely true, there was definitely a conspiracy,” he said.
He further said that there are people who are trying to discredit his organisation, which functions on the basis of Sanatan and truth.
“We have full faith in the SIT and the judicial commission. All the followers of the first Manav Mangal Milan Sadbhavana Samagam also believe that the truth will come out and the conspiracy will be exposed,” he said.
The godman said that “we stand with the families of all the people who died in the incident”.
Earlier, his lawyer AP Singh had said that Bhole Baba has reached his ashram in Bahadur Nagar village in Kasganj.
“He has reached his ashram and will stay here. He came here from another ashram. He has never been with anyone, in a hotel or in any other country,” Singh said.
The lawyer said the village is Baba’s ‘janmasthali’ (birthplace) and he last visited there for a day in 2023.
The stampede on Bhole Baba’s ‘satsang’ on July 2 claimed the lives of 121 people in the Sikandararu area of Hathras.
The Uttar Pradesh government has constituted an SIT and a judicial commission to investigate the incident.
The godman was not named as a suspect in the FIR filed with the Sikandrarau police station.
The SIT, in its report submitted to the state government on July 9, did not rule out a “grand conspiracy” behind the stampede. The report also flagged lapses in the local government that led to the stampede.
According to official sources, the report holds the organizers responsible for the incident. They allegedly did not take measures to control the crowd. The responsibility of the organization was also not recorded.
Bhole Baba’s lawyer claimed on July 6 that the stampede was caused by “a poisonous substance” sprayed by “some unknown men.”
A separate judicial committee headed by retired Allahabad High Court judge Brijesh Kumar Shrivastava, with retired IPS officer Hemant Rao as a member, is also probing the Hathras stampede case.
Earlier, government agencies, including the police, had blamed the organizers for mismanaging the event, noting that the number of attendees exceeded 250,000, instead of the permitted 80,000.
So far, nine people, including main suspect Devprakash Madhukar, have been arrested in connection with the stampede.
Madhukar was the main organiser and fundraiser of Bhole Baba’s ‘satsang’ on July 2 in Phulrai village in Hathras.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: Jul 17, 2024 | 10:38 PM IST