Three granted bail in ashram stampede

LUCKNOW - An Uttar Pradesh court Thursday granted bail to the secretary of spiritual guru Kripaluji Maharaj, the manager of his ashram in Pratapgarh and a food contractor in connection with last week’s stampede in which 63 people were killed.

Hiranyamay Chatterji, manager of the Bhakti Dham Ashram, Amit Kumar, secretary of the guru, and Shiv Kumar, the food contractor, were arrested Wednesday and booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) including sections 304 A (causing death due to negligence) and 337 (causing hurt by acting negligently).

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (Kunda) Arvind Kumar granted the three bail on personal surety of Rs.20,000 each, an official said.

A preliminary probe into the stampede blamed the ashram management for the tragedy in which the victims were mostly women and children.

In his report to the state government, Allahabad’s divisional commissioner said the ashram failed to estimate the number of people who would gather for free food and the dole of utensils and clothes, and did not put up even a public address system to handle the crowd.