A portion of Ballygunge Circular Road, near the army’s Maidan Camp, caved in on Monday evening, forming a large crater about 7 feet deep and 2.5 feet wide.
Police cordoned off the area, and civic officials began repair work late in the evening. A five-member team worked into the night, digging deeper to reach a pipeline that officials said was leaking.
The pit was lit with an electric connection, and workers brought in pipes to replace the damaged section.
The repair work is expected to be completed by Tuesday.
“First, the pipe will be repaired, then the crater will be filled with sand and bricks,” said a senior KMC official. “We are trying to find out if the water leak from the pipe led to the subsidence of the topsoil under the road — and then the road itself.”
With a portion of the road’s middle cordoned off, police diverted traffic through a single lane and deployed constables to prevent snarls. Traffic moved slowly around the cave-in site.
This is the second cave-in on a busy south Calcutta road in less than two weeks. A week-and-a-half ago, a portion of the road near the Park Street–Wood Street intersection had caved in. KMC engineers had traced that incident to a leak in the century-old underground brick sewer.