Ten people traveling to India’s Maha Kumbh Mela were killed and 19 others were injured after a car collided with a bus on a highway in Uttar Pradesh, according to DW. The crash happened on the Prayagraj-Mirzapur highway and involved devotees from the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh who were heading toward the festival in Prayagraj.
The packet evidence says the car rammed into the bus, leaving a high death toll and a larger number of injuries. That makes the collision one of several serious incidents tied to the festival period, when road traffic in and around Prayagraj has been unusually heavy because of the scale of the gathering.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath directed officials to step up relief work and ensure that the injured received proper treatment, according to media reports cited in the source. Indian President Droupadi Murmu also expressed condolences, calling the deaths extremely sad in a post on social media platform X. Those reactions show the crash was quickly elevated from a local traffic accident to a state-level response because of the number of pilgrims involved.
The Maha Kumbh Mela is described in the evidence as the world’s largest human gathering. It was underway in Prayagraj at the time, as part of a cycle that takes place every 12 years in the city. Devotees traditionally bathe in the holy waters at the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati river, and the event draws huge numbers of domestic pilgrims.
The scale of attendance is relevant because it explains both the pressure on roads and the political sensitivity around safety. The packet says official figures put attendance at more than 500 million by that point in the 45-day event, which began on January 13. Even if that figure is cumulative, it underscores the intense movement of vehicles and people around the site.
The crash also came after another fatal episode linked to the festival. Earlier in the week, seven people returning from the event died when a bus collided with a truck in Madhya Pradesh. And on January 29, a pre-dawn stampede on the festival grounds killed 30 people, according to official figures. Together, those incidents indicate that the festival had already become associated with multiple deadly emergencies before the February 14 collision.
The source also notes criticism from opposition parties, which accused the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh of hiding the true death toll from the January stampede. While that dispute is separate from the highway crash, it helps explain why every new fatal incident at the festival is now being watched through a lens of crowd management, reporting transparency and public safety.
For the families of the dead, the most immediate facts are simple: a pilgrimage journey ended in a roadside collision, and the final count was 10 dead and 19 injured. For state authorities, the incident added pressure to keep a fast-moving festival safe while traffic, devotion and mass logistics continue to collide.
