Passengers Fled a Train Over Fears of a Fire. Then Another Train Hit Them.

At least 12 people were killed and 11 people injured in India on Wednesday evening after they stepped off a train and were hit by another one while on the tracks, the local authorities said.

The passengers had disembarked after rumors of a fire on their train spread panic among those onboard, the authorities said.

The accident happened around 5 p.m. in Maharashtra State, about 170 miles northeast of Mumbai, said Ashok Pawar, a police inspector at the Pachora police station. The passengers were aboard the Pushpak Express, a train traveling from Lucknow, in northern India, to Mumbai in the west, when word spread onboard of a fire, he said.

Panic ensued, and people began to leave the train when it eventually came to a stop, Mr. Pawar said. They were hit by another train, the Karnataka Express, passing by on an adjoining track.

It was unclear how many passengers had been on the Pushpak Express. Mr. Pawar said the train had been packed with people, many of them migrant workers traveling for work. The accident, he said, left victims with severe injuries.

The authorities said that they were looking into the episode.

“We will investigate exactly what was the reason, whether there was an actual fire or whether it is just a rumor spread by any mischievous person,” Maheswar Reddy, the superintendent of police in Jalgaon District, where the accident happened, said to reporters.

Mr. Pawar, the inspector, said seven people who had died were from Nepal and four were from the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where Lucknow is. One body remained unidentified, and families of the victims were now in Jalgaon, he said.

Devendra Fadnavis, the top government official in Maharashtra, said late Wednesday that eight ambulances had been dispatched to the scene. The state government would offer financial assistance to the families of the victims, he said on social media, and would cover expenses for people who were injured.

The accident raised more questions around the safety of train travel in India, where millions of people depend on a vast but accident-prone railway network for transport, especially in rural areas.