A baby boy born with four arms and four legs has been nicknamed "God Boy" and drawn thousands of excited people to the city of Baruipur in eastern India

The boy's family is overjoyed because the birth defect makes him resemble a Hindu god. "The nurses said he was badly deformed, but I could see this was a sign from God," a relative said. "In fact, this is a miracle, it's God's baby. Indian gods have extra limbs just like this." A police officer struggling to control the curious crowds, however, says that it is "tragic" and that hundreds of people are praying and crying in the streets; some even believe that the birth is a sign of the end of the world. The boy's condition is believed to be the result of a "parasitic twin" attached to him in the womb. "With conjoined twins, you have two living fetuses that are attached either by the head, abdomen, or legs," the chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Hackensack University Medical Center said. But with a parasitic twin, "it's the same principle, except there is a malformation of one of those twins," he says. "As a result, the twin never fully develops and is then partially encased in the living fetus." An eight-limbed girl born in India in 2005 created a similar stir. After a 27-hour operation to sever the twin when she was 2, Lakshmi Tatma was able to walk.