A newborn baby in India miraculously survived falling through the lavatory of a moving train after his mother gave birth in a carriage.

The mother was reported to have passed out in the lavatory after bleeding heavily during the birth and did not immediately realize what had happened.

But a local guard discovered her newborn son after he heard crying sounds on the tracks near Dabli Rathan in Rajasthan, five miles from Hanumangarh, where he was later reunited with his mother. The baby did not suffer any serious injuries in the fall, officials said.

As Telegraph.co.uk reports, the woman, identified only as Manu, had been travelling with her husband and mother late on Sunday evening when she suffered severe abdominal pains and went to the lavatory where she went into labour.

“She delivered a baby boy in the lavatory and the newborn slipped through the pipe and fell on the railway track,” a railway official told the news agency IANS.

Most lavatories on Indian trains are simple holes in the floor which open straight onto the track.

Dr Bijrania of the Hanumangarh hospital’s neonatal unit said the mother and baby were doing well but the infant is underweight. “He weighs only 2kg (4.4lbs), and we are keeping him under watch,” he told the BBC’s Hindi Service.