Two-Faced Baby Triggers Shock and Awe

SAINI, India, April 1, 2008 — -- Ask anyone along the dusty, pothole-filled road heading to the tiny village of Saini, and they'll know who she is. The one with four eyes. The one with two mouths. The one with two heads.

They are not ashamed of the extraordinary looking little girl, the villagers who live near her, the young parents, the overprotective local doctor. That's because while she may only be 2½ weeks old, she is far more famous than any resident of this part of the country has ever been. She is famous because she was born with a condition known as facial duplication. She has one body and two faces.

"At first I was a little bit afraid," Vinod Kumar Singh, the 24-year-old father of the girl who still does not have a name, told ABC News. "But then I accepted whatever God gives."

In this case, God has given what many in this rural part of India consider a reincarnation of Ganesh, the Hindu God who is half person and half elephant. At first, hundreds of locals came to Saini to touch the girl's feet, dance at her bedside and offer the family money, thinking she was as divine a person as they would ever see.

"People from corner to corner from all India and all abroad come here to take the knowledge about this child," said Harsharan Singh, the village math teacher. "It's a gift of God… Some people say she is like a goddess. They call the baby a face of a goddess."

Her two faces and the single dimple on their shared cheek are as placid as any baby's. She is the first child of a farming family, one of about 100 people living in a village 40 miles outside New Delhi. Here, the average income is less than $2 a day, and the locals either work the field or support those who work the field in any way they can.

During a recent visit by ABC News, villagers fanned the baby, swatting dozens of flies away so she could sleep. The village, like so many in India, is modest. There is no electricity, there are no toilets, and there is no technology.

The parents did not know that anything was wrong with their daughter until she was born. Tens of millions of pregnant women in rural India do not receive prenatal care.