Berhampur: Vehicular movement was closed on Buguda-Bhubaneswar State Highway-33 as a 55-year-old culvert near Karchuli Square in Buguda block of Ganjam district collapsed on Wednesday.

"The culvert had been built in 1962, and it was in a bad shape," said assistant engineer of the public works department's Buguda division Ramesh Kumar Chowdhury.

The culvert was scheduled to be reconstructed during 2015-16 when the state highway from Biranchipur to Karsingand was renovated. But renovation of the culvert was dropped at that time as a pipe of the Rural Water Supply Scheme (RWSS) crossed beneath the culvert, Chowdhury said.

Now, the water pipeline has to be shifted first and the culvert will have to be reconstructed in the next phase, which would definitely take some time, he said.

In another incident, the old bridge over Badanadi connecting Bhanjanagar and Belaguntha caved in yesterday.

All the five pillars of the old bridge have completely collapsed. Though a new bridge was opened by chief minister Naveen Patnaik in 2013 about 50 feet away from the old bridge, people were still using the old structure.

"We were using the old bridge to have an easy access to areas such as Dhumuchai, Kurulai. Dimiripalli, Mandara and Natanga across the river. The old bridge had withstood the 1999 supercyclone and the flood of 2009," said Maheswar Mahanty of Kurulai village.

The old bridge was constructed in 1964 over Badanadi and it served as an important link among Bhanjanagar, Belguntha and Bhubaneswar.

Monkey bite

Five persons of Khaira are undergoing treatment at local hospital after suffering injuries of a monkey bite. A monkey has been committing nuisance at Sadanga and Allipur villages.