More than 30 people died Thursday and 37 were injured when a train slammed into a packed bus carrying a marriage party in northern India, local government officials said.
The accident took place in the middle of the night at an unmanned crossing in a remote area of Kanshiram Nagar district in Uttar Pradesh state, about 300 kilometres (around 200 miles) northwest of the state capital Lucknow.
District magistrate Selva Kumari told AFP by telephone that she suspected the driver might have been under the influence of alcohol as he drove the private vehicle with about 70 people on board.
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We suspect that the driver was drunk after the wedding party and thought he would be able to make it across the crossing before the train hit the tail of the bus, smashing it to pieces," she said.
A total of 33 people were killed and 37 were injured, including the driver, and three of them are in a critical state, she said.
The passengers were mostly the groom's relatives and friends returning from a late-night marriage ceremony.
The bride and groom were reportedly following behind in a jeep and were unhurt.
NDTV network broadcast footage from the scene, showing debris strewn across the tracks and police officers carrying bodies covered with sheets on stretchers.
India's state-run railway system -- still the main form of long-distance travel despite fierce competition from new private airlines -- carries 18.5 million people daily.
There are hundreds of safety incidents on the railways annually, but this was the deadliest accident so far this year.
Attempts to stop people riding on the roofs of trains have largely failed, vehicles routinely drive around barriers at crossings, and passengers are often seen hanging out of open doors in the carriages.
The office of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced compensation for the victims, with 200,000 rupees (4,500 dollars) for the families of the deceased and 50,000 for the injured.
In May last year, nearly 150 people were killed when a Mumbai-bound high-speed passenger express from Kolkata veered off the tracks into the path of an oncoming freight train after the track had apparently been sabotaged.
In July 2010, more than 60 people were killed and 165 injured when a speeding express rammed into the back of a stationary passenger train in the eastern state of West Bengal.
The worst accident in India was in 1981 when a train plunged into a river in the eastern state of Bihar, killing an estimated 800 people.
The railways is the country's largest employer with 1.4 million people on its payroll and it runs 11,000 trains a day.
Experts say the creaking system, the world's second largest under a single management, is also desperately in need of new investment to help end transportation bottlenecks that threaten the country's fast economic growth.
