Lakh and Lathicharge

A story in the Times of India this morning reports:

Cyclone Phailin on Sunday left a trail of destruction knocking down lakhs of homes affecting nearly 90 lakh people and destroying paddy crops worth about Rs 2,400 crore, but Odisha and Andhra Pradesh escaped from widespread loss of life.
As the largest evacuation efforts in the country's recent history helped keep casualties to the minimum, reports from the two states tonight said that 23 people died, all but two of them in Odisha. Most of the casualties were caused by wall collapse, uprooted trees and in floods.
Communication links were vastly disrupted by the strong winds that went up to a speed of 220 kmph when the "very severe" cyclonic storm crossed the coast near Gopalpur last night and weakened before turning into a depression. Ganjam district in Odisha bore the brunt of the storm.

That story contains several terms that I had never seen before.  I figured out that Rs stands for Rupees, but had to consult Wikipedia for definitions of lakh and crore.

A lakh (/ˈlæk/ LAK or /ˈlɑːk/ LAHK; also lac; abbreviated L) is a unit in the South Asian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; Scientific notation: 10⁵), written as 1,00,000. It is widely used both in official and other contexts in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It is often used in Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan English.

A crore (/ˈkrɔər/; abbreviated cr) is a unit in the South Asian numbering system equal to ten million (10,000,000; Scientific notation: 10⁷), which is written as 1,00,00,000, equal to a hundred lakh.

Although this was one of the largest cyclones to strike India in recent history, the Times reports that death toll was actually much higher in an incident  on a narrow bridge in Bhopal. 

I had to go back to Wikipedia for another definition, this time for lathicharge, to make sense of this story:

In India, a baton would often be referred to as a lathi. Some Indian police forces use lathis around 5 ft long, but in other places lathis are shorter. The term lathi charge is used by the Indian media more commonly than "baton charge".^[1] The lathi drill is taught to all Indian police recruits.

The report says

At least 115 pilgrims, including 30 children were killed and more than 100 injured in a stampede on narrow bridge to the historic Ratangarh temple in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh on Sunday. This is shocking re-run of the 2006 tragedy at the same site when 50 pilgrims were washed away.
The bridge over the swollen Sindh river, which leads to the temple was chock-a-block with over one lakh devotees from Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring UP on auspicious Navami day.
Swirling rumours about an imminent collapse of the bridge after a police lathicharge on devotees triggered panic. While scores of pilgrims were trampled, others were drowned after jumping into the swollen river. Bodies lay sprawled on the bridge even as rescue teams from Gwalior were delayed due to battered roads and a 10-km traffic jam.

There were only nine constables and a sub-inspector manning the over-lakh crowd on the 500-metre long bridge when the tragedy took place. Eye-witnesses claim a clash between two groups of villagers on the bridge forced a minor lathicharge by police which triggered the stampede.