The pregnant man.

Sanju Bhagat was born in Nagpur, India, in 1963. He had a normal life until his late 20s when his abdomen began to protrude as if he was pregnant. It kept increasing until he couldn’t carry out his daily activities.

Things got out of hand in 1999 when his breathing almost stopped  due to his extremely enlarged abdomen which didn’t give his chest room to take in air; he was rushed to the hospital.

At the hospital, the doctors believed he had a massive tumor growing inside of him and worked him up for surgery.

To their utter amazement, when they opened him up, they saw a baby in his stomach. It appeared Sanju didn’t have a tumor, he had his unborn brother growing inside of him for more than 35 years.

In medical terms, this was a rare case of fetus-in-fetu. Basically, what happens is that one twin doesn’t fully separate from the other during development, and ends up growing inside of the other twin’s body. The twin that’s growing inside is usually very small and undeveloped, and is called a “parasitic twin.”

Bhagat’s case has been described as a rare medical condition, Fetus in Fetu, or also popularly known as the ‘vanishing twin syndrome’. 

In this case, Bhagat’s twin was reabsorbed by him, leading to one twin being literally born inside the other. 

Basically, the inside twin lives like a parasite but usually, the ‘host’ twin would realise something was happening – not ignoring it like Bhagat.

Sanju Bhagat reportedly ‘refused to look at’ the ‘lump of hair and flesh’ twin that was removed from him and is now back to trying to live a normal life. Now he is reportedly back to working every day but his neighbors still remember his as the ‘pregnant man’. 

Moreover in Fetus in fetu cases, one or both twins die prior to birth due to the strain it place on the shared placenta. But what is even more amazing in this case, was that not only did the host twin survive and was delivered but that the parasitic twin continued to ‘live’ inside the other and die shortly after the final surgery. 

For Sanju Bhagat, his condition might have been a medical miracle for doctors, but for him it was a source of shame and misery, as the people who lived near him continued to tease him mercilessly.