In a truly bizarre and harrowing case, a villager who was burying his own daughter, who died shortly after birth, found an infant girl buried alive in a clay pot about three feet (90cm) below the ground in India.

Hitesh Kumar Sirohi, a local trader from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, rescued the girl who miraculously survived her ordeal but was breathing heavily when she was discovered. He immediately raised the alarm with the authorities and fed the baby milk while he waited for rescue workers to arrive.

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Sirohi was in the process of burying his own recently deceased infant daughter who was born seven months premature at the time he made the jaw-dropping discovery.

“We are trying to find the parents of the baby and we suspect that this must have happened with their consent,” local police chief Abhinandan Singh said of the incident, which he described as “very inhuman.”

Female foeticide and infanticide is somewhat common in parts of India owing to a persistent social stigma around raising girls.

The infant survivor is in a stable condition and is receiving treatment at a local private hospital. Head of the local neonatal intensive care unit Vimal Kumar said: “The hospital staff have named the baby Sita. She is undergoing treatment here, she has not yet recovered fully."

“As of now, her life has been saved. We are trying to trace the girl’s mother,” he added.

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