Two passenger trains collided head on in eastern India on Sunday, killing at least one person and leaving many trapped in the wreckage, a local official said.

The engine of the Guwahati-Bangalore express derailed as it collided with a local train in the Malda district of West Bengal, around 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of state capital Kolkata.

Malda district magistrate Rajesh Sinha told AFP the engines of the trains caught fire after the collision and some carriages tumbled into a paddy field next to the line.

"Some of the carriages are twisted and many passengers are trapped," he said, adding that one person had been confirmed dead.

So far 12 passengers had been pulled out of six mangled coaches and rushed to the government hospital in Malda district, he said.

A relief train has been sent to the scene.

Anxious relatives and friends of the passengers gathered at Howrah railway station in Kolkata, further along the line, seeking information about their loved ones.

The crash came three weeks after a packed express train travelling from Kolkata to New Delhi derailed at high speed in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, killing 63 people.

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 every day.

Its worst accident was in 1981 when a train plunged into a river in the eastern state of Bihar, killing an estimated 800 people.

The railway 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 system, the world's second largest under a single management, is desperately in need of new investment to improve safety and help end transport bottlenecks.