The incident took place in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills district about 80 km from Shillong, the state capital, police said.
"Five migrant coal miners from Assam died at Briwar when cables of a crane snapped midway in the coal pit," M. K. Dkhar, the district police chief of East Jaintia Hills, told the media.
The tragedy was not reported until Friday evening by villagers.
Labor incident in India occurs frequently due to a lack of enough safety measures, running down infrastructure, bad conditions of equipment and machines, and negligence.