The railways stopped a long-distance train at an unscheduled station in West Bengal's Howrah district to help a Bangladeshi woman reach a hospital after she gave birth to a baby girl inside the train, officials said on Sunday.

Directed by the authorities concerned, the Mumbai-Howrah Mail made an unscheduled halt at Bagnan station under the South Eastern Railway on Saturday, they said.

An Ambulance was arranged outside the station with the help of railway authorities and the daily passengers' association, and as soon as the train reached Bagnan, the woman and the newborn were taken to a local nursing home, an RPF official said.

Hailing from Satkhira district of Bangladesh, Manjila Khatun and her husband Rezaul Gazi went to Mumbai for medical purposes and were coming from there, the official said.

The woman went into labour after the train departed the Kharagpur station in Paschim Medinipur district in West Bengal.

The travelling ticket examiner had drawn the attention of the authorities concerned after he came to know from passengers of the train that the woman was experiencing labour pain.

"The health condition of the woman and her baby was stated to be stable. Later, they were shifted to a hospital in Kolkata for better treatment as the baby was premature," an official of the nursing home said.

The decision to stop the train at an unscheduled station was taken on humanitarian grounds," said a railway official at the Bagnan station.

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