MORBI, India: Nine people were arrested on Monday in connection with the collapse of a pedestrian bridge in western India that killed at least 137 people, police said.
The bridge, which had reopened days earlier after renovation, collapsed on Sunday evening, sending hundreds tumbling into the river or clinging to the wreckage while screaming for help in the dark.
The nine -- all associated with a company that maintained the bridge in Morbi -- were being investigated for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, senior police officer Ashok Kumar Yadav said in a statement.
Crowds at the site had been celebrating the last day of the Diwali holiday. CCTV footage showed the nearly 150-year-old structure swaying -- with a few people apparently deliberately rocking it -- before it suddenly gave way.
“We were all standing on the bridge together when it violently shook and crashed suddenly. I heard screams and a loud thud and then there was silence. Then slowly cries and screams,” survivor Madhvi Ben, 30, told AFP.
Ben said one of his legs was “entangled in a steel rope”, leaving him almost entirely submerged and struggling to break free. “I somehow blocked my nose and pulled myself up and released my leg from the wire. I grabbed another wire and climbed the remains of the bridge.
“Someone held my hand and pulled me out of the water before I reached the bank.” Local police chief P. Dekavadiya said that by Monday afternoon the death toll from the catastrophe in Prime Minister Narendra Modi´s home state of Gujarat had risen to 137.
They included around 50 children, the youngest being a two-year-old boy. One local MP, Kalyanji Kundariya, told media he had lost 12 family members in the accident, including five children.
