In what is a rarest of rare case, a two-year-old boy who had three penises since birth was operated at Sion hospital last month. The native of Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh was brought to Mumbai by his mother for treatment.

"The boy suffers from Diphallia. At birth, he had three penises, but he was able to pass urine through only one of them," said Dr Paras Kothari, head, paediatric surgery in Sion hospital.

Of the three penises, two had erectile tissue, which is responsible for sexual function, while the third was rudimentary. Also, his anus was absent. "There was a huge soft boney mass and tissue to which the penises were attached. However, the anus was absent. Two years ago, after his birth, the doctors in Uttar Pradesh had created an incision on the lower left side of his stomach, in a procedure called Colostomy, to let the excreta pass through a tube," said Dr Vishesh Dixit, paediatric surgeon at the hospital.

Doctors said it is an extremely rare anomaly, with only a hundred such cases reported in medical literature since 1609. Its occurrence is one in 55 lakh live male births.

The family got the boy to Mumbai for surgery after understanding that a complex procedure of removal of penises was not possible in UP. In a surgery that lasted for six hours, doctors at Sion hospital extracted the soft boney mass as well as the rudimentary penis. "The two functional penises were fused into one, by wrapping a mass of skin around them. Further, an anal path was created through the boy's rectum to facilitate the passage of excreta," said Dixit.

The boy will be taken up for a second surgery at the end of August to close the incision in the stomach. "The incision, through which he currently passes excreta, will only be closed after the anal path that has been created by us heals and is capable of function," said Kothari.

The boy's sexual function will be normal and his fertility will not be affected when he attains adulthood, said doctors.

"We want our boy to lead a normal life, and are grateful to the doctors who have conducted a successful surgery," said the boy's uncle.