MONITORING (SW) – At least 23 pilgrims, including nine children, were killed after a tractor-trolley with 54 villagers fell into a roadside pond in Uttar Pradesh state’s Kasganj district on Saturday.
The victims, mainly women and children, were on their way to the Ganga river bank for a holy dip on the occasion of Magh Purnima.
Police said that 12 people were injured in the incident, most of them critically, and were undergoing treatment. Chief medical officer (Kasganj) Rajiv Agarwal told TOI that “the condition of some of the injured was quite serious.”
Authorities have banned tractor-pulled wagons from transporting passengers, but the order is generally flouted in rural India.
In 2022, 26 people were killed in a similar accident, also in Uttar Pradesh.
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