Under-construction Bharatmala bridge collapses in Bihar's Vaishali

The collapse triggered panic on the site. Officials and police reached the spot, and an investigation was opened into what caused it, with questions raised about whether safety protocols were being followed at the site.

One young man was trapped under a heavy iron structure, his leg pinned beneath it. While rescuers worked, people at the scene poured water over his head. He was freed only after the machinery holding him down was cut apart.

"Officials are at the site, and the matter is being looked into," the District Magistrate, Varsha Singh, told PTI.

What police say caused it

Police said the collapse was likely caused by a technical glitch while material was being loaded with the help of a girder launcher, and that a detailed investigation will follow.

That is a narrower claim than it may sound. A girder launcher is a long steel gantry that sits astride the piers of a bridge under construction and lifts pre-cast concrete spans into place one at a time, walking itself forward as each span is set down. It is among the heaviest pieces of equipment on any bridge site, and everything it carries hangs over the deck and over the men working beneath it. A failure involving a launcher is a failure of the process on a live site rather than of the finished structure.

The NHAI said the incident happened while a launcher was being shifted during bridge construction on NH-139W, and that "No damage has been caused to the bridge structure in the incident".

It added that it remained committed to quality standards, to the safety of workers at the worksite and to finishing projects within the stipulated timeline, and that safety standards and protocols were being "strictly reassessed" to prevent a recurrence.

Built, not yet in service

Thursday's collapse happened before the structure had carried a single vehicle, and that distinction matters to any inquiry. A bridge that fails in service points to maintenance, ageing or overloading. A bridge that fails while it is still being built points somewhere else — to the design, the materials, the sequencing of the work, or the supervision of the contractor carrying it out.

It is also the stage at which the people on and under a bridge are the people building it. Those hurt on Thursday were labourers at work on the site, one of them pinned by the wreckage until it could be cut away from him. The NHAI has said the span itself was not damaged, which leaves the question for the inquiry as one about the lift rather than about the bridge.

Earlier collapses in the state

Thursday's is not the first structure in Bihar to come down in recent months. On May 4, a portion of the Vikramshila Bridge over the Ganga — carrying traffic between Bhagalpur and Mavgachhia, and connecting Seemanchal with the Kosi belt — collapsed, and traffic across it was suspended.

In 2024, ten bridges came down in the state within a fortnight. Fifteen engineers from the Water Resources and Rural Works departments were suspended over alleged negligence.

Those were separate structures under separate agencies. The Vikramshila bridge was carrying traffic when it gave way; the span at Lalganj was not yet built. No link has been drawn between any of them and Thursday's collapse.

What happens next

The police investigation will have to establish whether the launcher itself failed, whether the load it was carrying was within its limits, or whether the shifting operation was being run correctly at the moment it came down. The NHAI's account — that the machine was being moved rather than placing a span — narrows the question to the operation rather than to the design of the bridge.

Until the inquiry reports, what is on the record is short. A slab and a launcher are on the ground at Lalganj, seven men were hurt, one of them badly, and a four-lane project on NH-139W will be finished behind a safety review that the authority building it has said is already under way.