In a bizarre incident, a gang of thieves stole a 60-foot-long abandoned bridge in Bihar’s Rohtas district on Saturday.

The thieves posed as state irrigation department officials and brought in heavy machinery to demolish the bridge and ran off with the scrap metal, reported ANI.

A junior engineer of the irrigation department, Arshad Kamal Shamshi, said that villagers informed them that some people pretended to be irrigation department officials and uprooted the bridge using gas-cutters and heavy machines like JCB.

Shamshi said that a FIR had been filed regarding the incident.

He said, “Villagers informed that some people, posing as the officials of the irrigation department, came to the dilapidated and abandoned canal bridge and uprooted it entirely with the help of JCB machines and gas cutters.”

The sudden disappearance of the bridge has shocked everyone, Shamshi said, adding that officials of the department lodged a case against the thieves at Nasriganj police station.

Quoting another junior engineer, Yogendra, Shamshi said, “Since such construction and repair tasks happen at a slow pace, the department would have generated a notice to inform us prior.”

Notably, the bridge had been built in 1972 over the Ara canal in Amiyavar.