Rail officials had earlier placed the toll at 20 dead and 19 injured in the accident at a rail station in the Indian state of Bihar.

"The death toll has now touched 33 and also 18 other passengers are in hospital with injuries," spokesman Ashok Ganguli told AFP by telephone from the site of the accident in Bhagalpur town.

"Now there are no more bodies in the crushed coach," he said, adding that the rescue operation had also been called off. Rail officials had earlier placed the toll at five dead and 19 injured in the accident at a rail station in the Indian state of Bihar.

"Some of these people are very seriously injured so the death toll could change," spokesman Samir Goswami told AFP by telephone from the site of the accident in Bhagalpur town.

Among the dead were an infant girl and seven women, a senior police official said from Bhagalpur.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) quoting another official put the death toll at 32 killed.

"Twenty-seven bodies have so far been brought to the Bhagalpur station for identification," PTI quoted rail security deputy chief Ajay Verma as saying.

"Thirty-two bodies have been recovered including that of seven women and five children and an operation was on to search for passengers in the coach," Verma told PTI.

Railway company spokesman Goswami, however, said rescuers had brought out 20 bodies from the mangled carriage that the bridge, which was being dismantled, collapsed onto.

"As per our knowledge 20 people have expired so far," he said as hundreds of Bhagalpur residents converged at the crash site and raised anti-government slogans, witnesses said.

Television footage showed the train car covered in rubble and hundreds of onlookers watching the rescue operations.

"Dismantling was going on of a 140-year-old bridge at Bhagalpur station. The third arch fell on the coach," said Goswami.

Railway officials said they were unsure how many passengers were in the coach when the accident occurred, but that at least 30 passengers emerged unscathed from one end of it just after the incident.

India's Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has called for an inquiry into the accident and ordered that two engineers overseeing the dismantling of the bridge be suspended.

The interstate train had crossed into Bihar en route to Jampalpur town when the accident occurred at Bhagalpur, 1,240km east of the Indian capital New Delhi.

Indian Railways, one of the world's largest rail networks, transports more than 13 million passengers daily and reports some 300 accidents a year.