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JAGADEESH NV / EPA
A gang of thieves in India dismantled an 18 meter long iron bridge within three days and stole the parts.
In the meantime, the police have arrested eight people, according to the Indian news agency ANI.
An employee of the water resources authority was among those arrested and is said to have known about the theft.
It is said that the police seized an excavator, 247 kilos of iron and other materials during their investigation.
The perpetrators probably also sold the metal to scrap dealers, reports the local television station NDTV.
According to the police, it was a bridge from the 1970s that was no longer in use.
The thieves dismantled the bridge in broad daylight in the particularly poor state of Bihar and took the parts away in trucks.
They pretended to be employees of an irrigation authority and even enlisted the help of local officials.
Then they disappeared.
Villagers eventually informed the actual irrigation agency, and they filed a complaint, an agency engineer told ANI.
ptz/dpa