New Delhi: As search and rescue operations enter the fourth day, the death toll from the collapse of the Mahisagar bridge in Gujarat's Vadodara district has risen to 20 on Friday (July 11) evening, PTI reported, citing government officials. Rescue teams retrieved one more missing body, while another person under treatment succumbed to the injuries.

"On the first day we managed to recover 12 bodies and six on the second day. Today, one victim died unfortunately at the hospital and we managed to retrieve another body," Vadodara collector Anil Dhamaliya was quoted as saying by PTI.

Speaking on the next stage of search operations, the collector said that the main focus on Saturday will be to remove the main chunk of slab that has fallen into the river, with the help of the technical team. They will also try to retrieve another person from the missing list.

A number of vehicles moving along the Mujpur-Gambhira bridge plunged into the Mahisagar river in Vadodara district in the early hours of Wednesday (July 9) below when a section of the structure collapsed. The 830-metre-long bridge, which was inaugurated in 1985, was a key link between central Gujarat and Saurashtra region of the state. Among the vehicles was also a tanker carrying sulfuric acid, which is still stuck in the water.

The Vadodara collector said that on Saturday, efforts will be made to safely remove a tanker out of the water.

Earlier on Thursday, the collector had said, “Removing trucks that were stuck in the mud was a very big challenge”.

Meanwhile, chief minister Bhupendra Patel, who is also Gujarat's roads and buildings minister, suspended four engineers in connection with the collapse of the bridge.

The four, executive engineer N.M. Nayakawala, deputy executive engineers U.C. Patel and R.T. Patel, and assistant engineer J.V. Shah, were found responsible as per the findings of a preliminary investigation conducted by a team of experts in charge of preparing a report on the repairs and checks conducted on the bridge, a press release said.

“In addition, the chief minister has also given instructions to conduct an immediate and intensive inspection of other bridges in the state in the public interest,” stated the release issued by Patel's office.

The latest bridge collapse has raised concerns over the condition of infrastructure in Gujarat, with several other bridges having come under the radar. Regarding the Mahisagar bridge, its deteriorating condition had been flagged to the authorities as early as 2022.

Panchayat member Harshadsinh Parmar reportedly wrote a letter to the authorities about the bridge's worsening condition in 2022, while in a viral audio clip from the same year activist Lakhan Darbar is heard bringing up the state of the bridge with a roads and buildings official, who as per reports can be heard acknowledging that it was in poor shape.

However, executive engineer Nayakawala, who was suspended on Thursday, claimed while speaking to the press the previous day that an inspection of the bridge had revealed “no major damage”, per PTI.

Wednesday's bridge collapse is part of a string of such incidents that have occurred in Gujarat over the last few years. Most prominent among them was the October 2022 collapse of a bridge in Morbi, which killed 141 people.

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