Telenipara, April 26: A jetty crowded with more than 40 commuters collapsed into the Hooghly at Bhadreswar just when high tide swept in this morning, leaving three persons dead and several untraced and exposing again Bengal's dark infrastructure underbelly.

Till late tonight, 21 missing-person complaints had been filed by relatives, officials said. Among those missing is a teenager who was not allowed to join a preferred school because of the weak jetty but who used it to reach a tuition class.

Manas Ghosh, 23, a Kalyani University student, and another person named Raja Chowdhury, also in his twenties, were among the dead. The body of an unidentified elderly woman was also fished out.

At least 11 people had been pulled out alive from the water, officials of the national disaster response force overseeing the rescue effort said.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy around 11am, three factors stood out.

One, reported overcrowding, because those who wanted to board a boat and those who got off from it found themselves simultaneously on the jetty which appeared to have crumbled under the combined weight.

Two, poor maintenance. The wood-and-bamboo structure was not sturdy enough to withstand the weight of so many people, multiple witnesses said.

Three, the jetty was one of the three identified by the transport department for immediate reconstruction, and soil testing had been done three days ago. That the same jetty collapsed suggests the structure did raise red flags in the transport department but it was too late.

The jetty is supposed to have been maintained and run by a private operator till it was reconstructed. The operator's job included ensuring the safety of the structure as well as regulating the number of people on the jetty.

Thousands of people travel by motorised country boats daily between Bhadreswar in Hooghly and Shyamnagar in North 24-Parganas using the jetty, located at Telenipara, around 50km from Calcutta.

The operator in question is Mihir Bhattacharya, whose lease was cancelled after a 2015 mishap on the same jetty in which two people died. The Bhadreswar Municipality was then entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining and operating it, said the chairman of the civic body, Manoj Upadhyaya.

After some maintenance work on the jetty in September 2016, the Hooghly zilla parishad took over the structure. On April 1 this year, Bhattacharya was given the lease to maintain and operate the jetty.

It was not clear why an operator whose lease was cancelled less than two years ago was again given the responsibility. Several Bhadreswar residents alleged corruption. "How else could he have got the lease back after the 2015 accident?" asked Sujit Singh, whose brother Krishna, 14, is among those reported missing. Bhattacharya was not available for comment.

The account by Ashok Chowdhury, a boatman, suggested there was none to regulate the number of people on the jetty.

"We request people who want to get on boats to first wait on the banks and make way for people getting off boats. But people don't listen," said Chowdhury. "Today, when the boat from Shyamnagar reached Bhadreswar, a crowd had already assembled on the jetty to get on the boat. When people started getting off the boat, there was added pressure on the weak structure. Just then, the water level surged because of the high tide. Two parts of the jetty crumbled and were swept away."

"Even those who could swim struggled in the high tide," said Bidhan Sarkar, a resident.

Sujit said he had not admitted his brother Krishna to a school in Shyamnagar because he did not want him to get on the weak jetty. "But I did not know that he took private tuitions in Shyamnagar. Had I known, I would not have allowed him," a distraught Sujit said.

Bengal's infrastructure record has suffered blows of late. Last year in March, a part of the under-construction Vivekananda Road flyover had collapsed, killing 27 people and maiming 20 for life.