The Indian state government of Gujarat opened a criminal inquiry into the agency tasked with maintaining a historic cable bridge after the popular attraction collapsed on Sunday under the weight of hundreds of visitors, killing more than 130 people.
Harsh Sanghavi, the state’s home minister, told reporters that an inquiry under criminal provisions relating to manslaughter was opened into a local company. The bridge, which was built in the late 19th century, reopened to the public last week after months for repairs.
Mr. Sanghavi didn’t name the company. Several Indian news outlets reported that a local industrial company known as Oreva was in charge of the bridge’s maintenance and repairs.
Ashok Yadav, a senior official with the Gujarat state police, told reporters late Monday that nine people had been arrested in connection with the probe into the bridge’s collapse. The arrested people included two managers of the Oreva company, two ticket clerks at the bridge that collapsed, two bridge-repair contractors and three security guards tasked with regulating the entry of people on the bridge, according to Mr. Yadav.
Calls to Oreva weren’t answered on Monday and it didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
Mr. Yadav said police could make more arrests as the inquiry continues.
“Our effort is to set a strong example through this whole process,” he said.
Rescue operations continued into Monday, with 170 people pulled from the waters of the Machchhu river that the bridge spanned, the state disaster management agency said.
Videos shared by television channels and on social media showed people in the water clinging to portions of the collapsed bridge and trying to climb out.
Tushar Daftary, a local member of Lions Clubs International community service group, who was among those helping with rescue operations last night, said many people were visiting family in the area due public holidays in the past week, including Diwali and Gujarati new year. That meant more people than usual visited the bridge over the weekend, according to Mr. Daftary.
A local news report said some visitors expressed concerns to ticket agents that some people were shaking the overcrowded bridge.
Videos posted on social media platform Twitter showed the bridge—which sways when people walk on it—thronged with visitors, some of whom appeared to be vigorously shaking its suspension cables. Users of
Meta Platforms Inc.’s
Facebook in India and outside the country, however, were unable to view posts with the Gujarat hashtag for several hours on Monday.
“Keeping our community safe,” a message said, when users clicked through to a page that would normally display a stream of videos, photos and news reports related to the state or the bridge collapse. It added that the posts were temporarily hidden as “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards.”
“The hashtag was blocked in error,” a Meta spokeswoman said Tuesday, adding that it has since been restored.
She declined to say what material may have violated the platform’s standards, which don’t allow violent and graphic content, hate speech, and other types of material. India is Facebook’s largest market by users. Meanwhile, videos of Halloween revelers being crushed in South Korea over the weekend remained visible throughout Monday via a hashtag for the world Seoul.
After The Wall Street Journal sought comment from Facebook Monday, posts with the Gujarat hashtag became visible again, with the top post a video from an Indian TV network showing the moment the bridge collapsed.
The state has said it would award the equivalent of nearly $4,900 to families of those who died in the disaster, as well as give compensation to the injured. Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi,
who governed the state for more than a decade as he cemented his political rise, also unveiled compensation for victims and expressed his sorrow.
The tragedy cast a shadow over Mr. Modi’s three-day visit to the state that started Sunday, which is intended to showcase development projects ahead of elections there that are due later this year. The prime minister has been leading a renewed push to draw more factories to India and to create more jobs. In the hours before the bridge collapse, Mr. Modi presided over the start of construction on an aircraft manufacturing facility in the state in partnership with Europe’s Airbus SE, hailing it as a step forward for the country’s goal of becoming a global manufacturing hub.
But India’s efforts to attract more manufacturing and create more jobs have often faced challenges from concerns over the country’s dilapidated infrastructure and safety lapses, a worry that is likely to be made worse by Sunday’s disaster.
—Newley Purnell contributed to this article.
Write to Krishna Pokharel at krishna.pokharel@wsj.com and Tripti Lahiri at tripti.lahiri@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Harsh Sanghavi is the home minister for India’s Gujarat state. An earlier version of this article misspelled his surname as Sanghvi on second reference. (Corrected on Nov. 1)
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