Hindu temple crush kills 37 children and 27 women in India

A STAMPEDE involving thousands of poor villagers scrambling for free food and clothes at a religious gathering left 64 dead – 37 children and 27 women – and injured at least 44 at a Hindu temple in northern India.

It is believed the crowd may have panicked after a wooden gate to the compound surrounding the temple in Kunda, Uttar Pradesh, collapsed.

"How could this happen in such a holy place?" cried Phool Chand Saroj, 48, a farmer whose wife, daughter and grandmother died in the crush. "If they had been more careful about letting in the crowds this would not have happened."

Most of the men were working in the fields when women from surrounding villages gathered with their children at Kunda for gifts given out to mark the anniversary of the wife of a local religious leader, Kripalu Maharaj.