A male in India was called "the pregnant man" for decades because of how his stomach looked. Doctors now have a stunning explanation for it.
Sanju Bhagat looked like a normal male growing up. But as he worked on a farm in his 20s, his belly inexplicably began to grow.
"He wasn't eating that much," the History of Yesterday website said.
When breathing became difficult in 1999, Bhagat entered a Mumbai hospital to be examined. Doctors at first presumed the bulge was due to a cancerous tumor.
"We anticipated a lot of problems," Dr. Ajay Mehta related to ABC News in 2006.
But the truth revealed by surgery was shocking. It started with the spillage of several gallons of fluid.
"One limb came out, then another limb came out," a recent post by HistoryDefined.Net quoted a doctor as saying.
"Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws. we were horrified," the doctor continued. It had very long fingernails as well.
The confusing discovery is now called "vanishing twin syndrome," or "fetus in fetu." Doctors concluded Bhagat had a twin, but it died in the womb and was combined with his womb before his birth.
Britain's Daily Star tabloid reports the odds of such a development during a live birth are one in 500,000. Mehta's research found fewer than 90 such cases recorded in medical literature.
Doctors explain the twin lives off the internal system of its sibling for some time, as there is no placenta.
Bhagat, who is now about 60, was not injured by the development of the twin or the surgery. In fact, his recovery was immediate.
Bhagat reportedly now is back on his farm job. But sometimes, he still hears about his "pregnant" past.
"They still ridicule him," Mehta said. "You went for an operation and you had the baby."