Sasaram: How a 60-foot-long bridge in Bihar was stolen

Eight men have been detained in the Indian state of Bihar for stealing a bridge and selling it for scrap.

Local residents were overjoyed one-morning last week when four or five personnel, including some from the state government’s Irrigation Department, arrived in Amiyavar village, near Sasaram, with an earth excavator and gas cutting torches. They believed the government had finally started working on their request to demolish a long-abandoned bridge.

The men would arrive at the site at 7 a.m. for three days and work until dusk, chipping away at the bridge’s remains, cutting the iron with gas torches, and loosening the earth with excavators.

The metal was then loaded into a leased van and delivered to a local scrap dealer’s facility.

Arvind Kumar, a part-time irrigation department employee, is said to have overseen the dismantling and told anyone who questioned it that “the work had official authorization.”

According to senior police official Ashish Bharti, who is leading the inquiry, he is one of the eight people who have been arrested since then.

The village chief had made a written appeal to the authorities just days before the theft, Jitendra Singh said, requesting that the bridge be dismantled since it had become a health danger.

On the third and final day of the dismantling effort, Pawan Kumar, who lives in a nearby village, learned that the rusted old iron bridge had been removed.

Thieves steal water pipelines and sell them to illegal companies that make small, primitive firearms in several places in India.

Manhole covers are frequently stolen, and even toilet mugs on trains are not spared.

When Indian Railways revealed a plan to modernise its restrooms a few years ago, officials stated they would keep the metal mugs chained to prevent theft.

Metal thefts aren’t simply an issue in India; they’re also frequent in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other regions of Europe.

Metal theft generates severe losses for industry and local companies, as well as major disruptions to key public services, according to Europol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.

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