Nine people were killed and sixteen seriously injured Monday after an electricity wire snapped and fell on a mob protesting outside a police station in northeast India's Assam state.

A large mob armed with sticks and stones had tried to forcibly enter a police station in Tinsukia district to get hold of and punish five men arrested on murder charges earlier this month.

Police fired in the air to disperse the crowd, which they say numbered around 5,000, and local media reported that the overhead electricity wire snapped after it was hit by a stray police bullet.

‘They wanted to get the arrested suspects for immediate, retributive justice,’ local police official Mugdhajyoti Dev Mahanta told AFP.

‘There were only 40 cops at the police station and they had to fire in the air to disperse the mob of over 5000,’ Mahanta said.

Mahanta said police would investigate allegations one of their bullets had caused the line to fall but said it could also have been caused by protesters wielding bamboo sticks.

Some of the sixteen who survived electrocution were in critical condition at a district hospital, the police said.

In its effort to diffuse the situation, the police officials said they told the protestors that their demands weren't feasible.

‘We even told them the fact that suspects had been moved to another location, a local jail, but that didn't stop them trying a violent, forcible entry,’ district police chief Mahanta said.