Edited photo of a Pakistani baby born with a polymelia disorder shared as miracle baby born with a lord Shiva symbol on his forehead - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
October 18, 2022
A photo is being shared on social media claiming it to be a picture of a miracle baby born with six legs and the symbol of lord shiva on his forehead. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo of a miracle baby born with six legs and the symbol of Lord shiva on his forehead.
Fact: The photo shared in the post is a morphed one. The original photo does not show the Lord shiva tattoo on the boy’s forehead. The baby in the photo was born in Pakistan, with a rare genetic disorder called polymelia. A team of five doctors from the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) in Karachi successfully separated the extra legs from the baby in 2012. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same photo of a baby born with six limbs was found in an article published by the ‘First Post’ news website on 18 April 2022. But the original photo shared in the article does not show the lord shiva symbol on the baby’s forehead. ‘First Post’ reported it as a picture of a baby boy who was born with six legs in Sukkur, Pakistan. The baby was reportedly taken to the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) in Karachi on 16 April 2012, for surgery.
According to a few news reports published by the ‘Dawn’ and the ‘HuffPost‘, a team of five surgeons successfully separated the extra legs or lower limbs from the baby.  The then NICH Director Jamal Raza spoke to the media and said that the extra limbs and legs were the result of a genetic disease which would affect only one in a million or more babies.
Dr Raza said it was a case of parasitic conjunction. Dr. Raza said the supernumerary limbs are the result of a congenital anomaly called polymelia. An NCBI journal published regarding polymelia can be seen here. Raza informed the media that the baby started out developing as conjoined twins, but then one of the twins stopped growing and disintegrated except for its legs, which remained attached to the fetus.
In July 2022, a woman gave birth to a baby with four arms and four legs in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district. A large crowd thronged to watch the baby then and referred to the baby as ‘miracle of nature’ and a reincarnation version of God. But several international news websites reported that it can be a case of polymelia.
To sum it up, an edited photo of a Pakistani baby born with a polymelia disorder is shared as miracle baby born with a Lord Shiva symbol on his forehead.