Twelve people were killed on Wednesday, Jan. 22, after rumours of a fire on their train caused them to jump off and they were crushed to death by another incoming train, officials said.
The incident occurred in the western Maharashtra state.
‘People were run over by a train,’ said Ayush Prasad, a top official of Jalgaon district where the accident occurred, about 400 kilometres from the country’s financial hub of Mumbai.
’12 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’.
An average of 20,000 people d!ed each year between 2017 and 2021 in rail accidents in India, according to official records.
In 2023, nearly 300 people were killed when a passenger train and a stationary goods train collided, with the derailed compartments then striking another fast-moving passenger service.
