Passengers on the West Bengal Tata-Chapra Express raised the alarm when they saw Rinku Debi Ray, 28, jump from the speeding carriage in what they believed was a suicide attempt.
The train came to a halt more than a mile down the track, but when passengers ran back to help her, they discovered the new mother cradling her new baby in her arms.
Mrs Ray later explained she had been traveling to her parents home in Bihar, where she was planning to deliver her second child, with her husband Bhola and their four-year-old daughter, when she felt sharp pains in her abdomen.
She went into the lavatory hoping to relieve the pain, but instead suddenly gave birth. The baby fell into the lavatory bowl and through the flap onto the tracks under the speeding train, and her mother quickly ran out of the lavatory and jumped from the carriage to find the child.
Her husband, who pulled the emergency cord, and other passengers who saw her jump, said she injured herself in her leap, but managed to get up and start running back to where the child tumbled onto the track.
When the train came to a halt just over a mile down the line, Mr Roy and other passengers began searching for them. "We got off the train and started looking for my wife. After an hour we found Rinku sitting beside the track with the baby in her lap," said Bhola Roy, a 33 year old businessman from Rourkela, West Bengal.
His wife and new baby were transferred to Purelia district hospital where both are now recovering from their ordeal, while the railway station manager said the baby's survival was a "miracle".
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