At least eight people were injured in a stampede at Mumbai’s Mithibai College during a concert by rapper Divine on Thursday evening. They were admitted to RN Cooper Hospital in Juhu, but three of them are in critical condition in the intensive care unit, the Hindustan Times reported.

Those injured were identified as Kunal Chavan, 17, Max D’Souza, 18, Shadab Shaikh, 24, David Bangera, 20, Kalyani Agarwal, 18, Hitesh Kamble, 20, Prutha Vetaskar, 19, and Nikhil Pawar, 15. Bangera, Kamble and Pawar are in the surgical intensive care unit, while the others are “stable”, the on-duty administrative medical officer of Cooper Hospital said.

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The rapper was performing at Mithibai College’s annual Bachelor of Management Studies festival, Colosseum. An unidentified official from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s disaster cell said the first incident was reported at 10.30 pm. “It was an open ground and as the gate crashed, the kids received severe injuries,” he said.

Mithibai College Principal Rajpal Hande alleged that around 9 pm, some outsiders tried to barge into the college to attend the event. “We tried telling them that entry without passes is not allowed, but they still tried to force the gate open and that is when some of them fell,” he added. Hande said the programme was called off after the incident.

A police officer told the Mumbai Mirror that a crowd of over 2,000 people had gathered to watch the concert. An unidentified student said that there were thousands of people outside the college gate at 7.30 pm. When the gate was opened, people rushed inside and fell on each other.

However, Darshil Shah, the chairperson of the Colosseum festival, denied that a stampede took place. “There was no stampede as such,” he said. “The students were pushing each other to get inside the concert venue. There were some unruly people in the rear, and they created a ruckus. They didn’t have tickets and some of them had fake passes.”