Newborn survives fall through train toilet

A NEWBORN baby girl survived after falling through the toilet in a moving train and onto the tracks after her mother prematurely gave birth while relieving herself.

The child’s mother, who uses the single name Bhuri, was travelling with relatives on an overnight train in India when she went to the toilet shortly before midnight and unexpectedly gave birth.

“My delivery was so sudden,” said Bhuri who gave birth two months prematurely. “I did not even realise my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet.”

Arjun Kumar, her brother-in-law, said: “She fell unconscious and the baby fell through the toilet. Two stations later, we knocked at the door.”

Bhuri opened the door, soaked in blood.

“When we asked her about what happened, she said the baby had fallen through onto the tracks,” Mr Kumar said.

Toilets on Indian trains usually have holes that open directly onto the tracks, and there were no indications that authorities doubted Bhuri’s story or planned to investigate the incident.

Mr Kumar said after finding Bhuri, relatives pulled the train’s emergency brake and told railway officials what had happened.

A search was organised, and guards at one of the stations the train had passed found the baby.

“She was on the rail track for almost two hours,” said Dr Gautam Jain, a paediatrician at Rajasthan Hospital in Ahmadabad, in the western state of Gujarat, where the baby and mother were taken.

The child weighed a little over 3lb, Dr Jain said.

She had a low heart rate and body temperature. “We do not expect such children to survive,” said Dr Jain.