Television video showed a large structure of metal and concrete that had crashed to the ground in a cramped, congested area. People could be seen digging through the wreckage with their bare hands, and cranes were removing crushed cars.

The overpass is in the crowded Ganesh Talkies neighborhood, named after an old movie theater. The project had been under construction since 2009 and has missed several deadlines for completion, according to The Telegraph, an Indian daily.

In 2014, IVRCL, the company building the overpass, asked the government for more funds, citing its inability to buy materials. At that point, the project was more than three years behind schedule, and residents had complained that it was dangerously near their homes — a growing peril as India undertakes infrastructure projects in its increasingly crowded cities.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the accident. K. Panduranga Rao, an official with IVRCL, told reporters on Thursday that a girder supporting the structure had collapsed. But his associate, A. G. K. Murty, said it was too soon to know the cause.