(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-02-29 10:41

AHMEDABAD, India - A newborn baby girl survived an ignoble birth after slipping down the toilet bowl of a moving Indian train onto the tracks when a pregnant woman unexpectedly gave birth while relieving herself on Tuesday.

New-born baby girl of Bhuri Kalbi, 33, is seen inside a hospital in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad February 28, 2008. The baby girl survived an ignoble birth after slipping down the toilet bowl of a moving train onto the tracks when a pregnant woman unexpectedly gave birth while relieving herself on Tuesday. [Agencies]

"My delivery was so sudden," said the Bhuri Kalbi, the mother of the infant, born two months prematurely. "I did not even realize that my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet."

Kalbi, a 33-year-old woman from a village in Rajasthan, fainted on the toilet seat after the birth for a few minutes before waking up and alerting her family.

"They stopped the train and ran on the tracks to find the baby," she said, speaking from her hospital bed in the western city of Ahmedabad.

Railway staff at a nearby station were alerted and soon found the newborn girl lying uninjured on pebbles by the track. She is now in intensive care because of her premature birth, doctors said.

Most toilets on Indian trains are filthy chutes emptying directly onto the tracks.