The chaos erupted from the narrow gateway to the open auditorium. Just half an hour after the deadly stampede at the venue of the tech fest at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) on Saturday evening, the open auditorium where the event was held resembled a war zone. Piles of unclaimed footware and water bottles lay strewn all around.
Eyewitness accounts said the crowd, mostly in their teens, surged in different directions, and people lost their footing, causing a domino effect. People fell and knocked others down, piling one person on to another, while the others tried to scale over the flight of steps to the exit and got trapped.
