Indian officials said the accident happened amid a surge of passengers waiting for trains to attend a major Hindu religious festival.

Ten women and three children were among at least 18 people killed in a crowd crush at a train station in India’s capital New Delhi, as thousands of Hindu pilgrims waited to board trains to attend the annual Mahakumbh Mela religious festival.

The incident unfolded on Saturday night at about 8pm local time (14:30 GMT) on two platforms at the New Delhi Railway Station as huge crowds waited to board trains to Prayagraj city, where the festival is being held, some 624km (387 miles) southeast of the capital.

Delhi’s Chief Minister Atishi, who only uses one name, initially told reporters that 15 people had died, while the Press Trust of India later updated the death toll to 18 people.

India’s Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw said four trains had been deployed to “evacuate” a sudden and unprecedented surge of travellers at the station and an investigation has been ordered to find out what went wrong.

High-level inquiry ordered https://t.co/Egaifp5Onx

— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) February 15, 2025

Video footage shared on social media by local news organisations showed people jostling as they tried to force their way onto packed train carriages.

“People were running across platforms and there was a chaotic situation that led to people falling on each other,” a man who witnessed the events told India’s ANI news agency.

The Times of India said witnesses reported a “crowd surge” that was sparked by the delay of two trains which led to an unexpectedly large number of passengers waiting on platforms. When people rushed to board an arriving train, “the situation spiralled out of control, with some passengers fainting amid the sudden surge”, the media outlet reported.

“This sparked rumours of a stampede, leading to further panic,” it said.

The Mahakumbh is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and officials said about 500 million devotees have already visited the festival since it began in January.

Crowd crushes regularly occur at India’s major religious festivals.

At least 30 people were killed in a crush at the Mahakumbh last month when tens of millions of Hindus gathered to bathe in sacred river waters. The centrepiece of the six-week festival is the ritual bathing at the point where the Ganges and Yamuna merge with the mythical Saraswati River.

At least 36 people were also crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was held in Prayagraj, and more than 400 died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954.

India’s railway system, which is the fourth-largest train network in the world, has also witnessed serious accidents in the last two years, including a collision in 2023 that killed at least 288 people.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies