Newborn slips through toilet pipe of moving train, survives miraculously

KATHMANDU: Call it destiny or an out-and-out coincidence: a baby was born inside the toilet of a moving train, slipped through the flush pipe, fell on the railway tracks, but survived!

This happened in Bhojipura district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh yesterday. And the lucky baby was born to a Nepali woman, according to media reports.

Identified as Pushpa Tamata of Kanchanpur district, the heavily pregnant Nepali national was heading to an eye hospital boarding a train from Tanakpur to Bareilly. But she experienced labour pain on the train while it had stopped at the Bhojipura Railway station, according to the Press Trust of India.

The 40-year-old woman, who said she was deserted by her husband, gave birth to a baby girl in the toilet. As fate would have it, the newborn fell into the toilet pipe soon after her birth and landed on the concrete boulders of railway tracks as the train started moving along.

Cries of help from a bleeding and hapless mother alerted the follow passengers. They pulled the emergency chain bringing the train to a halt after it moved some 500 metres, the Press Trust of India reported.

Passengers who ran towards the baby found her alive and informed the railway police about the incident. The "miracle baby" and the mother were then rushed to a primary health centre for treatment.

Quoting a medical doctor, the Press Trust of India reported that the child was totally safe and did "not have even a scratch" on her body.