LAKHISARAI, Aug. 17 -- Seven people were killed and at least 19 injured at the Ashok Dham temple in Bihar's Lakhisarai district on Monday, after a false rumor that an electricity pole had collapsed onto worshippers triggered a lethal panic in what had begun as a routine Shravan pilgrimage.

The dead were overwhelmingly women. At least four of the seven victims were female, aged between 44 and 55, among the thousands who had traveled to the ancient Shiva temple in the early hours of a Monday morning, during the sacred fasting month when devotion floods Bihar's pilgrimage sites year after year.

The crush began with a rumor whose origin had not been established by Monday evening. District Magistrate Shailendra Kumar told reporters that pani...