An under-construction bridge in Peddapalli, Telangana, collapsed on Monday night after two of its five concrete girders fell to the ground. The incident occurred around 9.45 pm after a strong wind blew in the area, NDTV reported.
The under-construction bridge collapsed in Telangana on Tuesday evening. (X/Sudhakar Udumula)
Luckily, a marriage party of 65 people on a bus passed by just one minute earlier and escaped being crushed by the concrete, said Sirikonda Bakka Rao, the sarpanch of Odedu village.
Visuals shared on social media showed multiple parts of the bridge lying on the floor after the collapse. The nearly one-kilometre bridge spanning the Manair River was inaugurated in 2016 by the former speaker of the Telangana assembly, S Madhusudhana Chary, along with local MLA Putta Madhu. Nearly ₹ 49 crore was sanctioned for its construction.
For the past five years, the villagers have been utilising the same path, constructing a mud road beneath the bridge that recently collapsed. The project was intended to be finished within a year and aimed to shorten the distance between three towns – Manthani, Parakal, and Jammikunta – by approximately 50 km. The bridge was designed to link Garmillapalli in Tekumatla Mandal, Bhupalpally, to Odedu in Peddapalli.
According to locals, the contractor halted the work within one or two years due to pressure for commissions and non-payment of dues by the government, NDTV report said.
The same contractor had built a bridge in Vemulawada that was washed away during heavy rain in 2021, the report quoted a local Sandeep Rao as saying. “The cost of the project was escalated and last year another ₹ 11 crore was added to the estimatd cost without even 60 per cent of the work being completed,” he added.
In an unrelated incident in Bihar’s Supaul , at least one worker was killed, and nine others were injured when a portion of an under-construction bridge collapsed last month. Unconfirmed reports, however, stated that more than 40 labourers were working when three pillars of the longest under-construction road bridge in the country collapsed. Nine of the labourers were rescued.
