MAN WITH TWIN LIVING INSIDE HIM - A MEDICAL MYSTERY!

Another Person Lived Inside a Man for Nearly Four Decades
For nearly four decades, Bhagat carried the body of his twin. (ABC News)

Sanju Bhagat's stomach was once so swollen he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe.

An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and remove the source of the bulge in his belly.

"Basically, the tumor was so big that it was pressing on his diaphragm and that's why he was very breathless," said Dr. Ajay.


"To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside," he said. "It was a bit shocking for me."

Fetus in fetu happens very early in a twin pregnancy, when one fetus wraps around and envelops the other. The dominant fetus grows, while the fetus that would have been its twin lives on throughout the pregnancy, feeding off its host twin like a kind of parasite. Usually, both twins die before birth from the strain of sharing a placenta.

Sometimes, however, as in Bhagat's case, the host twin survives and is delivered. What makes his case so unusual is that no one suspected Bhagat had a twin inside him for 36 years.

Today Bhagat is in good health and leads a normal life, but he still gets teased occasionally. "They still ridicule him. What they say is, you went for an operation and you had the baby," Mehta said.