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I was a master electrician a long time ago, and be assured that most of the current did not travel through his body or there would be nothing more of him than tiny pieces of flesh.
More likely, he was using bolt cutters to cut the wire and the cutters caused a short to the electrical cabinet which caused the explosion.

I understand your reasoning here, and agree with your practical insight. However, the witness report in this case was that the man was actually on fire. If we take that report at face value, it would tend to imply that the victim got a whole lot of resistive heating in a real big hurry.

I was thinking about what you said. If he severed the line with a bolt cutter, at 33kV, there'd be a hell of an arc when that line parted. In fact, if the bolt cutter had metal handles, it would arc to his hand or wrist as soon as the blades got even partially through the insulation on the cable. 33kV can jump at least two or three inches through dry air; considerably farther if there's dirt, sharp points, etc.

So they guy draws an arc right through the handle of the cutter. Then it arcs off some other part of his body to the cabinet (as you suggest) or to some grounded conduit. Then he's getting the full heating power of that current.

You may have seen the YouTube video of a man electrocuted on top of an electric passenger train (go to Google/YouTube and type in train electrocution India if you haven't). His entire body turns into an arc; there is an explosive sound like a bomb going off. He falls down dead and his body is smoking but intact.

I'm not an expert on electric rail lines in India, but I do know that the electric transport system in Philadelphia runs (or at least used to run) at 11.5 kV. If we assume that was the case in the India electrocution, the 33kV electrocution describe in the story would have been approximately 10 times as violent to a first approximation.