Journeying across India for the pinnacle celebration of the Hindu calendar, Laxmi and her family were sleeping by the roadside Wednesday as they waited to cleanse themselves in the sacred Ganges river.

All of a sudden they were violently roused in the middle of the night by police officers, who smacked them with wooden sticks and ordered them to clear a path for other pilgrims.

A pilgrim weeps outside the hospital after a stampede during Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj on January 29. Picture; Niharika KULKARNI / AFP

The officers were frantically trying to make way for a surging throng of devotees that would imminently spill over crowd control barriers and crush the dozing masses on the other side.

"A large crowd surged forward, pushing and trampling us," Laxmi, shell-shocked and huddled under a thick woollen shawl in the morning cold, said.

"In that chaos, my sister-in-law lost her life."

Security personnel try to control the pilgrims near the site of a stampede amid the ongoing Maha Kumbh Mela festival. Picture: Niharika KULKARNI / AFP

Laxmi is among millions of people who flocked to the northern city of Prayagraj for the Kumbh Mela, a six-week festival of worship and ritual bathing meant to cleanse the faithful of sin.

Wednesday marks one of the holiest days in the festival, coinciding with an alignment of planets in the solar system, when saffron-clad holy men lead crowds into the water at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

Hindu holy men arrive to take a dip in Sangam, the confluence of Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers, this week. Picture: Arun SANKAR / AFP

But the Kumbh Mela has a woeful safety record and celebrations have once again been overshadowed by a stampede, this time fatally crushing at least 15 pilgrims.

Hindu holy men arrive in a procession to take a dip in during the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj on January 29. Picture: Arun SANKAR / AFP

Even before the latest incident, the festival's attendees fumed over what they said was poor crowd management.

"If we talk about the worst organized Kumbh Mela in history it will be 2025," Mata Prasad Pandey, a 65-year-old retired teacher, said.

Pandey complained that he had been forced to walk more than 25 kilometres to and from the festival site because of onerous restrictions on vehicle traffic by organisers.

"Elderly people and women are forced to walk for ages," he added.

Reserved pathways and cordoned-off areas reserved for eminent attendees have been a source of vehement complaint at the festival for reducing the amount of space for common pilgrims.

Several videos shared widely on social media before the stampede showed crowds shouting at police officers for preventing them from moving about the festival grounds on foot, while they gave priority travel to distinguished guests in cars.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi condemned organisers for "mismanagement" and a "focus on VIP movement" which he blamed for the deaths.

Others, including Prayagraj local Rekha Verma, pointed the finger at heavy-handed tactics by "rude and abusive" police officers to keep immense throngs of devotees in line.

"Police are using force to control the crowd and that's why this happened," she said.

But on the ground it was unclear how much power police had to keep order, with the Uttar Pradesh state government estimating tens of millions of people scattered around the festival site.

Even after news of the stampede spread, a mass of people slid under gates and jumped fences to move towards the riverbed, shrugging off aggressive orders from officers to turn back.

Others felt uncomfortable staying at the festival, despite the long and arduous journey.

"We walked all over the night to reach out the bathing spot, but now I don't think it's safe to go there," pilgrim Nirmala Devi said.

"We have children and elderly people with us," she said. "We are headed back home, safety is important."

Organisers have been eager to tout the technological advancements introduced for this year's edition of the Kumbh Mela.

That includes an extensive artificial intelligence-assisted surveillance system meant to give advance warning of dangerous crowd crushes.

"The government said again and again on TV that the arrangements it had made were sufficient but we now see that they have failed," university student Ruchi Bharti said.

"If you see advertisements it seems like the government is providing world-class facilities," he said. "But this stampede proved that was all a lie." - AFP