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.

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.

Families from West Bengal allege that bodies of their relatives, who died in a Maha Kumbh Mela stampede, were returned without official death certificates. The victims, Basanti Poddar and Urmila Bhuniya,