Devotees run as incredibly tall ‘tazia’ tower collapses

A 55-feet tall ‘tazia’ tower keeled over and collapsed during a Muharram procession in Bhopal in India on October 2.

Tazia is a representation of the tomb of Imam Hussain, grandson of Prophet Mohammad.

During Muharram, Muslims take out tazia towers in procession to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Husain and 72 others in the battle of Karbala.

The procession at Bhopal was a disaster-in-the-making from the word go.

The tazia tower was too tall and was teetering under its own weight.

The organisers, who were trying to keep it upright by balancing it from different directions with the help of long ropes, realised that they were battling a lost cause.

Devotees, who were pulling the tazia through the narrow lanes, raised an alarm as it began to tilt. Sensing that it was about to fall they started running for their safety.

Their fears came true as the towering structure fell over a building and broke into pieces.

Syed Jaffer Hussain of Hyderabad-based Shia Companions Wakf Protection Front said no one was hurt as the building took the brunt of the fall.

He said the structure had not been built well. “Due to rains the organisers had been left with very little time to work on it,” he added.

Jaffer said in Hyderabad and many other places the height of tazias averaged at six or seven feet.

But in parts of India different regions compete to build the tallest tazia of the year, sometime raising their height to even 100 feet.