Indian police have opened a case of culpable homicide against the company building a highway overpass that collapsed in the eastern city of Kolkata, killing at least 23 people and injuring dozens more.
Rescuers worked all night with cranes and jackhammers to clear concrete slabs and steel girders from the 100-metre length of the overpass that broke off suddenly and crashed down on pedestrians and vehicles on the road below.
Ninety were rescued, many with serious trauma injuries, but chances of finding survivors in the wreckage had dwindled nearly a full day after Thursday's disaster in a teeming commercial district near the city's Girish Park.
"It is being ensured that there are no more dead bodies under the debris," SS Guleria, a deputy inspector general of the National Disaster Response Force, told Reuters Television.
Television channels broadcast images of a street scene with two motorised rickshaws and a crowd of people suddenly obliterated by a mass of falling concrete that narrowly missed cars crawling in a traffic jam.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose centre-left party is seeking re-election next month in the state of West Bengal, said those responsible would not be spared and blamed the previous state government that had awarded the overpass contract in 2007.
Yet she herself faces questions about a construction project that has been plagued by delays and safety fears under her rule.
A newspaper reported last November that Banerjee wanted the overpass - already five years overdue - to be completed by February. Project engineers expressed concerns over whether this would be possible, the Telegraph newspaper said at the time.
The disaster could play a role in the election in West Bengal, whose capital is Kolkata. The poll is one of five being held this month that will give an interim verdict on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nearly two years in power.
Indian company IVRCL was building the 2km Vivekananda Road overpass, according to its web site.
Its shares fell another six per cent on Friday as police announced they had opened a case of culpable homicide.
The local offices of IVRCL were sealed and a police team was on its way to interview bosses at the company's headquarters in the southern city of Hyderabad, according to reports.
A senior IVRCL manager had drawn national condemnation for calling the disaster an act of God.
"We did not use any inferior quality material and we will co-operate with the investigators," the company's director of operations, A.G.K. Murthy told reporters on Thursday. "We are in a state of shock."
Years of delays may have caused corrosion to metal elements of the overpass, undermining its stability, according to rescuers who examined the wreckage. Locals said that concrete was poured on the stretch the night before its collapse.
