> New Life for Lakshmi after operation

This pictures shows two-year-old Lakshmi with her parents and her brother Poonam.
She was born with eight limbs and doctors have been carrying out a 40-hour operation to save her life.

Surgeons at the Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, India, agreed to carry out the £100,000 procedure and foot the bill.

She is joined to a "parasitic twin" who stopped developing in her mother's womb, while the surviving foetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped foetus.

It has also emerged that Lakshmi's parents had to keep her in hiding after a circus allegedly tried to buy her

Lakshmi is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some people in her poor village in the northern state of Bihar revere her as a goddess.

The operation is made more complicated because the two spines are merged, the girl has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities.

But a hospital spokesman said: "We have high hopes of everything going fine and everything is going fine now."

The rare condition is called Ischiopagus.
Indian girl has extra limbs removed