Foetus Slips Out Of Moving Train
AHMEDABAD [TOI – 28 Feb 2008]: Call it good fortune or just the will of God. But the life in a seven-month-old foetus, that fell through the toilet bowl of a running train when the mother went to ease herself, still lives on!
Call it a miracle, perhaps. This tiny bundle weighing just 1.4 kg, which slipped from the womb into the toilet tube and crash-landed on rocks between two steel tracks, is from the top drawer of survival tales.
Born a good two months premature, she is recuperating in the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of Rajasthan Hospitals. Here, she lies without a scratch after the providential escape just before midnight on Tuesday.
"She is a fighter. In just 12 hours after the unthinkable accident, she was coming out of the accident quite well," said pediatrician Dr Raj Kumar.
"She is a gift from God. How else can all this be explained," the girl's mother, Bhuri Kalbi (33), said. Bhuri is a native of Swaroopganj, located between Sirohi and Abu Road, in Rajasthan and was travelling by the Jodhpur-Ahmedabad train.
Bhuri was headed for Ahmedabad with her relatives for a medical check-up. She felt very weak on the toilet seat and passed out. The next thing she remembers is people knocking on the toilet door. When she managed to get up to open the latched door, she realised an emptiness in her stomach. "I realised my stomach was flat. My child was gone," said Bhuri whose husband works in a packaging unit in Ahmedabad. Bhuri's brother-in-law Arjun said when she opened the door she was semiconscious. He realised with complete shock what had happened. "We immediately pulled the chain at Kalol, two stations away from where the child had slipped off and alerted the train guard," he said.
On a day when the Railway Budget was presented by Lalu Prasad, who promised ‘green toilets' in trains, the girl can thank railway personnel for snatching her from sure death. As she lay on the track — fortunately located close to the Amblisayan railway station — some members of the Gram Rakshak Dal alerted station master KK Rai that a new-born child was lying on the track. While rushing to the spot on foot, Rai said he could hear the cries of the baby from a distance. On coming closer, he could not believe what he saw. "The baby was lying dangerously close to the left track with the umbilical cord hanging by the side," Rai said. The baby had turned blue due to the chill at midnight. The railwaymen wrapped the baby in a cloth and called the local doctor.
While the child was being examined, a call came, saying the parents were traced.
The mother could not believe her eyes when she was reunited with the baby two hours later at the Kalol Civil Hospital. And she just can't take her eyes off this baby ever since.