“When the stampede situation happened, all these people who organised (the event) fled from the spot,” Uttar Pradesh police Inspector-General Shalabh Mathur told reporters.
AP Singh, the preacher’s lawyer, said he would also represent the six people who had been arrested.
“Police are doing their job but the people they have arrested are the people whose family members are victims of the stampede,” Singh said. “Those who actually caused the stampede have run away.”
The stampede broke out on Tuesday afternoon when attendees were exiting the canopied ground by a highway where the event was held, the initial police report said.
Several people ran towards the preacher’s vehicle but were stopped by his aides, leading to commotion during which some of them fell to the ground and were trampled, officials said.
Others who tried to run to open fields to escape the stampede also slipped and fell on the uneven ground in the path of the rest of the crowd, and were unable to get up.
The dead, which included 112 women and seven children, have all been identified and their bodies handed over to their families, officials said on Thursday.
Stampedes and other accidents are not uncommon at religious events and places in India involving large crowds, and most of these are blamed on poor crowd management.
