A newborn baby delivered in a train lavatory has survived falling through the bottom of the toilet of a moving train.

The incident occurred on the West Bengal Tata-Chapra Express in India, where the sewage system flushes straight through to the tracks belo..

Passengers watched 28-year-old Rinky Debi Ray jump from the carriage in an attempt to rescue her child, which she discovered lying unharmed on the track.

The Daily Telegraph reported Mrs Ray as explaining she had been travelling 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 began to feel a sharp ache in her abdomen, she headed for the lavatory hoping to relieve the pain. Instead she suddenly gave birth. The baby fell into the lavatory bowl and out on to the tracks. 

Mrs Ray's husband saw his wife jump off the carriage and pulled the emergency cord. The train came to a halt just over a mile further down the line. "We got off the train and started looking for my wife," he said. "After an hour we found Rinku sitting beside the track with the baby in her lap."