New Delhi: A guard who was working near the Rs 1, 700 crore bridge that crashed in Bihar’s Bhagalpur is missing.Rescue officials are trying to trace him. “After the bridge collapse, a person working as a guard with SP Singla Company is said to be missing. His body has not been recovered yet. Search by SDRF and NDRF teams is underway to trace him,” Chandan Kumar, Circle Officer, Parbatta, Bihar was quoted as saying by NDTV.
Soon after the four-lane bridge came crashing down like a house of cards yesterday evening, Bihar government told the media that the structure that “serious defects” and portions had been deliberately destroyed in a planned fashion. “It may be recalled that a portion of this bridge had collapsed on April 30 last year. We had, thereafter, approached IIT-Roorkee, which is esteemed for its expertise in construction matters, to conduct a study. It is yet to come up with a final report but experts who had studied the structure had informed us that there were serious defects,” Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav said at the press conference. A government official, during the press conference, said that they decided not to take any chance and went ahead with pulling down parts of the bridge.
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Yadav said that “many structural defects have been pointed out by experts and we have already pulled down many portions which have been flagged as particularly vulnerable. Today’s incident confirms our worst apprehensions”.
