Passengers regularly forced to cling limpet-like to the sides of Mumbai’s rush hour trains because there is no room inside will tell you that as commutes go, theirs is a killer. And they aren't joking: 17 people died every weekday on the city’s suburban rail network last year — a record for what may well be the world's deadliest stretch of track.

Details of the death toll confirm the horror stories told by veteran commuters in India's financial capital, a group long inured to the sight of body parts littering the line. The figures, which were obtained for The Times using India’s Right to Information Act, show that the lion’s share of fatalities — 3,443 out of a total of 4,357 in 2008 — were caused by people being mown down by trains while trespassing on the tracks.

The next biggest portion of deaths – 853, or more than three every working day – were of passengers who fell (or were pushed) from carriages that travel at 40mph, have no doors and are often crammed dangerously full. Another 41 people perished after being bludgeoned by trackside poles while hanging out of overcrowded trains. Twenty-one were electrocuted to death by power cables as they sat on the roof — a location often chosen to avoid paying for tickets that cost only pennies.

The statistics suggest that Mumbai's commuters are nothing if not pragmatic. Even after taking into account the frequent timetable disruptions caused by railway deaths, the level of congestion on the city's roads means that the trains' attractions outweigh the dangers, many say. “A 45-minute train journey across town can easily take more than two hours by car,” Indranil Mukherjee, a news photographer who relies on the railway as the fastest route to reach breaking stories, said.

“Yes, you will see the occasional dead body . . . but a three-month unlimited pass only costs about 1,500 rupees (about £20).”

Visitors are advised to treat the city railway with respect. It carries 7 million people a day and is a third more densely packed than Tokyo's famously congested equivalent. Officials have coined the term “super-dense crushload” to describe how 550 commuters are regularly crammed into a carriage built for 200 – a situation where up to 16 standing passengers share every square meter of floor space.

In the crush fatal accidents are fully expected. Many Mumbai train stations do not have properly stocked first aid kits, but do have sheets to hand to cover corpses.

The Government acknowledges that India’s creaking infrastructure needs an urgent overhaul. However, a recent report by Allen & Overy, the law firm, estimated that the country faces a $190 billion (£1.3 billion) shortfall in the financing required for the task and in Mumbai train safety appear to be getting worse. The historical data is patchy, but the fatality figures for 2008 showed a 6 per cent rise on the annual average of the five preceeding years, according to documents obtained by Chetan Kothari, a local activist.

Pressure groups are angry that state authorities have backed policies that favour private cars, instead of investing in public transport. The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment claims that more than a half of India’s cities are fogged by “critical levels” of pollution and is disapproving of the generous state aid given to the manufacturers of the £1,400 Nano, the world’s cheapest car.

In a report published last week, it pointed out that personal vehicles — cars and two-wheelers — use up more than 75 per cent of the road space in Delhi, but meet only 20 per cent of the city’s commuting demand. “Our cities don’t need more cars,” it said. “They need better public transport.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• 'Was it real?' The US bailout nightmare
• Iranian opposition plays the long game