Eleven individuals were killed on Wednesday after rumors of a fire on their train prompted them to leap off and be crushed to death by another approaching train, according to officials.
The event in western Maharashtra is the latest to strike India’s decrepit train network, which transports millions of passengers daily and has suffered multiple calamities over the years.
“People were run over by a train,” said Ayush Prasad, a top official of Jalgaon district where the accident occurred, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the country’s financial hub of Mumbai.
“11 people have died and about five are undergoing treatment.”
It was not immediately clear whether the fire alarm was false.
A spokesperson for Indian Railways was quoted by local media as having said that someone had pulled the “alarm chain” on a Mumbai-bound train, following which “a few passengers got down from the train”.
“At that moment, they were run over by another train going in the opposite direction,” the spokesperson said.
India’s interior minister Amit Shah expressed his “deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in this accident”.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said the “tragic incident” was “deeply disturbing”.
“Deeply saddened by the tragic loss of lives,” he said in a post on X.
