At least 17 people were killed and many more injured in a stampede at India's Maha Kumbh festival, the world's largest religious gathering, a doctor at a government hospital said, as tens of thousands of pilgrims rushed to dip in sacred river waters during the Hindu event.

Moments before a deadly stampede at the world's biggest religious gathering in India, Hindu devotees queuing to take a spiritual bath in a river said they pleaded with police to open barricaded routes to thin out a surging crowd.

My mother fell and died on the spot. My father then removed her body sometime later and kept it on the side. Once the crowd thinned, it was shifted to an ambulance. After postmortem, it was sent off at 6 pm on Wednesday and arrived in the village around 11 am today,