Baby with four legs, three hands saved by doctor amid village's plans to dump him in a river
A baby born in India with four legs, three hands and two penises was allegedly going to be "thrown into the river" by his relatives before a local hospital offered free surgery.
The unnamed baby boy was born with a parasitic twin to mother Kuli Bai, 22, in a small village called Pindwara in northern India.
The mother's family was so shocked by the baby's extra limbs they were going to dump him in a nearby river but word got around the village and reached the man who ran the local hospital.
Doctor Bharat Pal Danda sent an ambulance to collect both mother and child, and the baby's extra limbs and intestines were removed in an emergency operation at a hospital in Jaipur, about 450 kms from Pindwara.
Parasitic twins occur when a baby is born with the attached tissue of an undeveloped twin that has died in the womb.
The condition happens when identical twins fail to separate.
The parasitic twin's tissues attach to the host, but the condition is so rare it only occurs in around one in a million live births.
"I was very shocked when I heard these relatives, who seemed extremely orthodox and superstitious, were planning to kill the baby," Mr Danda said.
"I couldn't sit back and do nothing."
The hospital in Jaipur had conducted a very similar operation just three months prior.
"The boy is currently doing fine but we will continue to keep him under observation for at least a week," Dr Parveen Mathur, one of four doctors involved in the surgery, said.
"It feels good that both surgeries have been successful."
