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NEW DELHI: Three people were killed and more than a dozen hospitalized Sunday following a sudden crowd surge and stampede at a popular Hindu festival in eastern India, local authorities said.

“There was a sudden crowd surge of devotees for having a glimpse of the Hindu deities during which a few people either fainted, felt suffocated or complained of breathlessness,” said Siddharth Shankar Swain, the top government official in Puri.

Swain told The Associated Press that 15 people were rushed to a local government hospital, where three people were pronounced dead. Autopsies are planned to determine the exact causes of death. The other 12 people have been discharged.

Tens of thousands of devotees gathered in the coastal town early Sunday at Shree Gundicha Temple, near the famous Jagannatha Temple, to catch a glimpse of the deities onboard three chariots, Swain said.

The coastal temple town of Puri comes alive each year with the grand “Rath Yatra,” or chariot festival, in one of the world’s oldest and largest religious processions. The centuries-old festival involves Hindu deities being taken out of the temple and driven in colorfully decorated chariots.

The festival is one of Hinduism’s most revered events and draws hundreds of thousands of devotees annually from across India and the world.

Naveen Patnaik, a former top elected official of Odisha state where Puri is located, said in a social media post that “no government machinery (was) present to manage the surging crowds, highlighting a shocking lapse in duty.”

“While I refrain from accusing the government of criminal negligence, their blatant callousness has undeniably contributed to this tragedy,” he said.

Patnaik called the incident a “stampede” that “exposes the government’s glaring incompetence in ensuring a peaceful festival for devotees.”

In a social media post, Mohan Charan Majhi, the top elected official of Odisha, apologized for the incident, saying it occurred “due to stampede among devotees” amid excitement to have a glimpse of the deities.

Majhi said the security negligence will be investigated immediately.

“This negligence is inexcusable,” he said, adding that concrete action will be taken against the persons involved.

NEW DELHI: Indian investigators are not ruling out sabotage in connection with the crash of the London-bound Air India flight that killed at least 260 people earlier this month, a minister has said, as officials began examining the plane’s black box.

The London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in the western Indian state of Gujarat on June 12.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation has confirmed that investigators had recovered from the crash site both components of the black box — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — and brought them to the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau in New Delhi last week.

“Right now, the investigation is ongoing. But this is a rare incident. It has never happened before that both the engines got shut at the same time,” Murlidhar Mohol, minister of state for civil aviation, told the media on Saturday evening.

He did not dismiss the possibility of “sabotage” when New Delhi Television asked if it was being considered.

“We are investigating it from all angles to find out what was the cause of this accident,” Mohol said.

“We are looking at CCTV footage of Ahmedabad over the last 30 days, (of) those who came, those who went through screening, all the passports — we are probing it from all the angles.”

Data from the black box has been downloaded and the final report was expected in three months.

“Was it due to a bird strike, was there some technical issue with the engine, was there a fuel-supply issue, why both the engines shut down at the same time ... we will know only after the investigation,” the minister said, adding that the black box would be investigated domestically and “there is no need to send it abroad.”

The Air India flight was carrying 242 people — 230 passengers, two pilots and 10 crew members. Only one person, a British national sitting in an emergency exit seat, survived the crash.

It was initially unclear how many more people were killed on the ground as the aircraft fell on the B. J. Medical College and hostel for students and resident doctors of the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital.

After two weeks of DNA testing, authorities in Gujarat state announced on Saturday the final toll, saying they had recovered 260 bodies.

The number is lower than the initial number reported by the Junior Doctors’ Association at the B. J. College, whose president told the media a day after the crash that the hospital had received the bodies of 270 victims.