Bali Maroti Talikote is 25 years old and went to a fair to ask for blessings.
It was Friday, September 11, in Mahagaon, Yavatmal district, amid the Tanha Pola celebrations. The entire village — women, children, entire families — had gathered to visit the Puneshwar Mahadev temple. Among the rides set up for the occasion was a Ferris wheel, the attraction promising the highest view of the day. Bali got on without knowing that her hair would become trapped in the mechanism’s bearing, causing a partial tear to her scalp.
The police monitoring the fair intervened immediately and took her to a higher-level hospital. Four other people sustained injuries, some with fractures, although they were stable. The initial indications point to something worse than an isolated accident: defective welds and failed supports in the Ferris wheel’s very structure, the same one that hundreds of families had used that day without suspecting a thing.