MORE than forty people died and more than thirty were injured after thousands of hungry flood victims stampeded into a government relief centre in southern India yesterday.

The panic, apparently caused by fears of a lack of food vouchers, took place in a narrow street leading to a school being used as a collection point in Madras, in which dozens of women were crushed.

The trouble began when 4,500 people lined up along the street at midnight after rumours spread that yesterday would be the last day of distribution.

The police asked the crowed to leave in the early hours of the morning because the centre was not due to open for several hours. But the crowd demanded that the coupons be distributed immediately.

A sudden downpour about 4am created a frenzy to get inside the centre. Dhanalakshmi, an eyewitness, said: “Suddenly it started raining heavily and there was a mad scramble to get in. As the lock on the main door snapped, those in the front got crushed by the jostling crowd behind them.”

Indian news channels showed pictures of police carrying the dead and injured out of the school building as survivors looked on shocked. Several relatives of the victims wailed and screamed in grief. Piles of the dead women’s plastic shoes and torn clothes lay in muddy puddles at the site.

The food coupons have been issued to the thousands of people who were evacuated from their homes after floods in October, when heavy rains swept across southern Indian killing more than 400 people and leaving half a million homeless in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

Nineteen of the 43 people crushed to death yesterday were women. At least 11 policemen who tried to control the crowd were among those hurt.

The incident was the second stampede for food relief in Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu, since the floods. Last month six women were crushed to death as 300 people rushed to collect 2,000 rupees’ (£25) worth of cash, food and clothes outside a college building.

Victims and their relatives were furious with the authorities for not having learnt lessons from the earlier incident and taking measures to prevent it from recurring. They claimed that there were inadequate security arrangements at the centre. But R. Nataraj, the chief of police in Madras, said that he had posted several officers at the relief centres because he had expected problems. “But what happened here was beyond our power,” he said.

The state government announced compensation of 100,000 rupees (£1,240) for each of the families of those who died in the stampede.

An inquiry into the tragedy has been ordered.

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