"Forty-two people have died and eight are injured and have been hospitalised," Pran Kankhade, superintendent of police for Indian Railways at Nagpur, told AFP.

The accident happened near the village of Kanan, 688km east of Bombay in Maharashtra state.

The tractor was pulling as many as 40 people who had attended a marriage and were passing from one village to another when the train struck them at the unmanned crossing, Kankhade said.

The dead included a three-year-old boy.

"The people travelling in the train coaches are largely unhurt," said Indian Railways spokesman Santosh Kumar.

The injured have been taken to hospital in Kanan.

In December, a head-on train collision killed 38 people and injured 52 because of a signalling fault in the northern state of Punjab.

The December crash brought opposition party calls for the resignation of Railways Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, who is currently campaigning for state assembly polls in his native state of Bihar.

Parliament is not sitting at present.

India's railways transport more than 13 million passengers daily on networks that sprawl 108,700 kilometers across a nation with a population of over one billion.

The system records around 300 accidents every year.