KOLKATA (AFP) - – A newborn baby has escaped unhurt after being delivered in the toilet of a moving Indian train and then falling onto the tracks, reports said Thursday.
Rinku Debu Ray, 28, suddenly went into labour late Tuesday while on board an express train that was passing through the state of West Bengal.
According to the Times of India and Hindustan Times, Ray delivered the baby in the toilet of her carriage and the newborn infant slipped through the discharge chute and onto the tracks below.
The distraught Ray immediately jumped from the train, prompting passengers to pull the emergency cord in the belief that she was trying to commit suicide.
"We got off the train and started looking for my wife," husband Bhola Ray, 33, told the Hindustan Times.
"After an hour, we found Rinku sitting beside the track with the baby in her lap," he said.
Mother and child reboarded the train and were taken to the nearest station and then to hospital, where doctors pronounced them both in good health.
"This was a miracle," station manager Shyama Prasad Mukherjee told the Times of India.
In a similar incident in February 2008, a baby girl, born prematurely, fell through a train carriage toilet in the western state of Gujarat.
She was found on the tracks two hours later, not only alive but almost completely unharmed.