Pune Kundmala Bridge Collapse

InfrastructurePublic SafetyLocal GovernanceTourismMaval, Pune district, Maharashtra15 Jun 2025

What happened

Illustration: Pune Kundmala Bridge Collapse

On 15 June 2025, at about 3.30 pm, an iron footbridge over the Indrayani river at Kundmala in Pune district's Maval taluka collapsed under a monsoon weekend crowd. Four people were killed and 51 were injured. Many were swept into the swollen river before NDRF teams, police and local villagers pulled them out. The bridge was more than 30 years old, the district collector had already declared it dangerous, and warning boards stood at the site — but nothing physically stopped tourists from walking onto it.

Toll

Deaths

Injured

Root cause

What directly caused this incident

Confirmed by district inquiry

The iron footbridge, built around 1992, failed structurally while carrying far more weight than it was designed for. Around a hundred or more people were standing on the narrow span on a monsoon Sunday, with two-wheelers pushing through the crowd, when it gave way and dropped into the river. A district-level inquiry led by Pune collector Jitendra Dudi, presented on 22 July 2025, found that cracks and corrosion had gone unattended for years because no department had formally taken charge of the bridge after it was built. The same inquiry noted that the district planning committee had sanctioned Rs 3 crore in 2017 for structural audits and repairs — money that was never spent on this bridge. The collector had declared the structure dangerous and villagers had put up warning boards, but there was no barricade, no gate and no enforced closure, so weekend tourists who did not know the area walked on freely.

In short: A bridge that no department had on its books, declared dangerous but never actually closed, gave way under a monsoon tourist crowd.

Systemic failures

These failures existed before this incident — and will cause the next one unless the system changes.

01 Critical priority

No department had the bridge on its books, so nobody was required to maintain it

Namesake — gap named, no rule changedAs of 30 Jul 2026

The bridge was built around 1992 with a Member of Parliament's local area development funds, and after it was finished it was never entered in any department's property register. When it collapsed, the PWD's Pune superintending engineer said his department had not built it, the Zilla Parishad's executive engineer said bridges of that size were outside the ZP's scope, and Induri gram panchayat's property register carried no mention of it. Because no owner existed on paper, no inspection cycle, no repair budget and no accountable engineer was ever attached to the structure — the district inquiry's own finding was that it 'fell through the cracks of jurisdiction' with 'no official handover between departments'. The only recorded work on it was about Rs 10 lakh of minor repairs roughly a decade before the collapse, with no record of which department ordered them. The same absence of a documented owner and a valid fitness check ran through the Morbi suspension bridge collapse in Gujarat in October 2022, where a 19th-century pedestrian bridge was handed to a private firm and reopened without municipal safety clearance, killing more than 130 people.

Morbi suspension bridge collapse, Gujarat (October 2022, more than 130 deaths) — reopened by a private contractor with no municipal fitness certificate; Gambhira bridge collapse, Vadodara (July 2025, 13 deaths), where residents say repeated repair requests were ignored on a 45-year-old bridge.

What's being doneNamesake — gap named, no rule changed

The district inquiry named the gap in July 2025, and Pune collector Jitendra Dudi said inter-departmental coordination procedures would be drawn up. In the Legislative Council on 1 July 2025, PWD minister Shivendraraje Bhosale — pressed by opposition and BJP members alike — could still only say the structure was technically a 'rural road', without naming a department responsible for it. Beyond that, no Maharashtra rule, government resolution or asset register requiring every publicly funded bridge to be formally handed over to a named maintenance owner has been reported. More than a year on, the Rs 8 crore replacement bridge still has not been built: the proposed site falls within 100 metres of an ordnance depot, the defence establishment has not cleared it, two rounds of high-level meetings have failed to break the deadlock, and the PWD is now looking for an alternative site.

As of 30 Jul 2026

02 Critical priority

A structure can be declared 'dangerous' and still be left open to the public

Partial action — enforced by circular, not by ruleAs of 1 Jun 2026

Declaring a bridge dangerous in Maharashtra produces a notice and a signboard. It does not produce an enforced closure with a named officer answerable for keeping people off. At Kundmala the collector's declaration and villagers' warning boards were the entire safety system — no barricade, no gate, no posted guard — and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis conceded after the collapse that tourists 'might not have been aware of the severity of the bridge's condition'. Two days later Chief Secretary Sujata Saunik effectively admitted the framework was broken, telling officials that signage is insufficient and that entry must be temporarily banned at dangerous spots until repairs are complete. Fadnavis also said 500 vulnerable locations had been identified across Pune district, with notifications issued and villagers asked to caution people — which describes a warning system, not a closure system.

Morbi suspension bridge, Gujarat (October 2022) — reopened to ticket-buying crowds without a fitness certificate; Gambhira bridge, Vadodara (July 2025) — kept open to heavy traffic despite years of resident complaints about its condition.

What's being donePartial action — enforced by circular, not by rule

This is where the state did move. On 17 June 2025, PWD minister Shivendraraje Bhosale ordered a structural audit of every state-owned bridge, culvert and building over 25 years old, with traffic to be suspended immediately on unsafe structures, permanent barricades installed at hazardous locations, police and gram panchayats notified, and unused bridges on highways sealed. Pune's district audit reported on 7 July 2025 that 58 Zilla Parishad bridges and 3 PWD bridges were dangerous — out of 5,518 ZP and 794 PWD structures — and 63 were listed for demolition after the monsoon. The practice has carried into 2026: on 1 June 2026 the district administration shut two more bridges near Panshet and Khadakwasla under Section 115 of the Motor Vehicles Act and diverted traffic. What is still missing is a standing rule. All of this rests on circulars and a collector's orders that can lapse with the officer, and no public reporting confirms how many of the 63 flagged bridges were actually demolished or repaired.

As of 1 Jun 2026

03 Critical priority

No enforceable inspection law covers state, district and village bridges

Partial action — national highways onlyAs of 1 Jul 2026

India has design codes and inspection guidance from the Indian Roads Congress, and state PWDs are expected to check bridges before and after every monsoon, but this is departmental practice rather than a legal standard with an independent auditor and consequences for skipping it. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways runs the Indian Bridge Management System, which has inventorised about 1.7 lakh structures — but it covers the national highway network, and although the ministry has offered the software free to state governments, take-up has been thin, which is how a village footbridge at Kundmala ended up in no database at all. A count of media reports by Newslaundry found 170 bridge collapses, 202 deaths and 441 injuries in India between 2021 and 2025, while the ministry's own figure was 42 collapses between 2019 and 2024 — the country does not agree on how many of its bridges are falling down. IIT Delhi professor Suresh Bhalla put it plainly: 'Most bridges are just left to age without any sensors or real-time monitoring... authorities wake up very late when there are visible signs of damage.' India has no dedicated national bridge safety authority of the kind Japan, Germany and the United States maintain.

Savitri river bridge collapse at Mahad, Raigad district, Maharashtra (2 August 2016) — a British-era highway bridge washed away with two state transport buses on it, about 22 feared killed; Morbi, Gujarat (October 2022).

What's being donePartial action — national highways only

In July 2026 the road transport ministry launched a nationwide digital survey under the Indian Bridge Management System, mapping every highway structure over six metres with a mobile app, drones and a central dashboard, with a September deadline for inspections. It covers national highways only — roughly 1.7 lakh structures — and does not reach the state, district and village bridges that killed people at Kundmala. Maharashtra's own answer after the collapse was a circular ordering audits of structures over 25 years old, not a maintenance policy with inspection intervals and named accountability. Bihar shows a different path is possible: its State Bridge Management and Maintenance Policy, 2025 is the first dedicated state bridge policy in India, mandating drone scans every 90 days for critical bridges across 3,968 structures, third-party audits by IIT Patna and IIT Delhi, and publicly accessible Bridge Health Index reports from October 2025. No central bridge safety law or authority has been created.

As of 1 Jul 2026

Solved elsewhere

Bihar adopted the State Bridge Management and Maintenance Policy, 2025 — India's first dedicated state-level bridge upkeep framework. It mandates drone scans every 90 days for critical bridges across all 3,968 bridges in the state, uses third-party audits by IIT Patna and IIT Delhi for high-risk structures, and publishes Bridge Health Index reports on a public portal.

04 High priority

Monsoon tourist spots get blanket bans, never a counted limit on how many people can be there

Namesake — announcements only, no verified rolloutAs of 30 Jul 2026

Kundmala is a well-known monsoon picnic spot that draws thousands on a wet weekend, but no agency had set or enforced a maximum number of people for the site or for the footbridge itself. More than a hundred people were on a narrow span, with motorcyclists pushing through the crowd, when it failed. Pune's standard instrument is a blanket prohibitory order banning entry to water bodies for the monsoon months — easy to issue, widely ignored, and no substitute for a metered limit with tickets and counting. The district inquiry itself recommended ticketing and visitor-capacity systems for tourist sites, which is an admission that no such system existed. The same gap killed five picnickers, most of them children, at a waterfall behind Bhushi Dam near Lonavala in the same district on 30 June 2024; prohibitory orders followed then too, and Kundmala happened twelve months later.

Lonavala Bhushi Dam waterfall drownings, Pune district (30 June 2024) — five picnickers, most of them children, swept away at a monsoon spot with no capacity control; the response was prohibitory orders, not counted limits.

What's being doneNamesake — announcements only, no verified rollout

On 17 June 2025, Chief Secretary Sujata Saunik ordered risk-prone tourist spots temporarily closed during the monsoon and told districts to deploy Home Guards and NCC cadets for crowd control and to use CCTV and AI-based crowd monitoring with the police, covering over 500 monsoon-sensitive locations flagged across the state. Pune collector Jitendra Dudi announced within days that an entry fee and visitor-capacity limits would be decided within 15 days, along with a joint forest committee covering 20 locations and Rs 50 crore for digital tourism infrastructure. More than a year later there is no public confirmation that a counted capacity limit or ticketing system is actually operating at Kundmala — the replacement bridge with its promised viewing gallery has not been built, and the district's visible monsoon tool remains the annual blanket prohibitory order. Families of the four dead were given Rs 5 lakh each.

As of 30 Jul 2026