Faulty transformer - shock to the village

Two persons died, 10 persons got injured and several electrical appliances got damaged when an entire village was under electric shock. The two persons died when they tried to switch on power supply in their homes. The news item appeared in Times of India. The report says this happened due to a faulty transformer and after the identifying the problem, the transformer was replaced and power supply was restored.

I talked to my friends of electrical engineering discipline on this news item. I was told that this can happen, due to lack of earthing, or supply of high voltage directly to domestic users, or when there is contact of phase with the body of the equipment with no neutral. If persons are wet, then they can get shock while switching the plug.

Earlier also there were many news reports of damage of TVs, refrigerators, bursting of picture tubes, etc due to high voltage.