For Satish, the memory of his wife’s last WhatsApp status — a cheerful announcement with a selfie that she had joined the queue for Vaikunta Ekadashi tokens — lingers like an unfinished conversation. Lavanya, 38, was among the youngest victims of the deadly stampede in Tirupati on Wednesday evening, a tragedy that has shaken the thousands who gathered for the annual pilgrimage.
A homemaker from Visakhapatnam, Lavanya left her home on Tuesday, eager to seek blessings at the revered Tirumala temple with her sisters-in-law. Her husband, Satish, an assistant at a private hospital, stayed back to care for their two daughters, aged 11 and 13. “She had planned this trip for weeks and was looking forward to it,” Satish said on Thursday evening at his Vizag home, still waiting for Lavanya’s body, which was on its way from Tirupati, about 750 kilometres away.
Lavanya joined the queue on Wednesday, around noon. It was a bustling scene, and Lavanya couldn’t resist sharing the moment with her friends and family — a selfie with two others — posting a WhatsApp status from the line with the caption: “Quee (queue) line in Tirupathi Dharshanam.”
Later that evening, around 8 pm, Lavanya made a hurried phone call to Satish. “She called to ask about the kids — if they had eaten, if everything was okay,” Satish said. “She mentioned how crowded it was. She said she would call later.”
That call never came. He got the tragic news around 11 pm.
By Thursday evening, barely 24 hours after the tragedy and just hours after Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s visit, the front gate of Padmavathi Park, where Lavanya and five others were killed, had been completely sanitised. The usual evening crowd had returned, except for a dozen policemen stationed at the iron gate, the site of the stampede.
Chaos had erupted on Wednesday when the gate was opened briefly to evacuate an elderly woman who reportedly required medical attention.
A senior police officer familiar with the incident described the scene, saying that between 2,000 and 4,000 people were inside the park at the time. The crowd had been locked inside the park, with plans to release them in a controlled manner once token distribution began at a nearby school. A barricaded path had been set up leading from the main gate of the park to the school. While one officer claimed a dozen police personnel were stationed at the gate, another official said there were only six officers present when the stampede occurred.
“A family informed the officer at the gate that an elderly woman inside needed urgent medical attention as she was feeling suffocated,” an officer said. “The officer sent two constables inside to verify. Once they confirmed, he ordered the woman’s evacuation. The huge crowd inside mistook the gate opening as the start of token distribution.”
According to the police FIR accessed by The Indian Express, the incident occurred around 8.20 pm. “Police personnel noticed an elderly woman experiencing breathing difficulties… They began escorting her out through the gate. However, during this time, rumours spread among the devotees that token distribution had started. Believing they needed to rush to secure tokens on the first day, the devotees surged toward the gates, pushing them open and rushing out in large numbers. This led to a loss of control, and many devotees fell to the ground during the commotion. Despite the police’s efforts to manage the situation, the massive crowd could not be controlled. Around 40 people sustained injuries, and all were transported to the hospital via ambulances. Among them, five individuals were declared dead by doctors,” the FIR said.
Just over an hour earlier, another stampede occurred at Vishnunivasam in Tirupati, killing a 50-year-old woman. This first fatality, at a different token distribution centre, occurred around 7.30 pm. Fifty-year-old R Malliga from Salem in Tamil Nadu collapsed amid a crowd surge near the token queue. Her husband, Krishnan Chinna Govindan, said they had reached Tirupati by train. “We waited about 100 feet from the entry point, surrounded by other devotees. She tried to stand up but collapsed as the crowd unintentionally pushed her. I pulled her aside and arranged an auto to take her to the hospital, but the driver suggested calling an ambulance. By the time we reached Ruia Hospital, doctors said she was already gone. She had diabetes and other health complications,” he said, describing the intense crowd buildup at the venue.
Both incidents, caused by flawed crowd management, have drawn sharp criticism. Eyewitnesses described scenes of complete chaos. “It was unavoidable. People were screaming and falling as the gates gave way. The police were shouting at the crowd to stop, but there were not enough personnel to manage the situation once the stampede began. There were panicked announcements on the mike afterwards for families that found their loved ones missing,” said a devotee who survived with injuries.
While the FIR states that the stampede was “accidental, due to sudden panic and confusion among the devotees,” the tragedy was also about serious lapses in planning.
The Vaikunta Ekadashi festival, a prominent occasion in the Hindu calendar, traditionally draws thousands to Tirupati. This year, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams introduced additional token distribution centres to handle the expected crowds. However, inadequate crowd control measures and misinformation appear to have worsened the situation.
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