A baby girl was abandoned out in the cold, yet managed to survive the night after a litter of puppies found her and kept her warm.
The baby was found left in a field in Lormi, a village in India’s Chhattisgarh province.
Locals heard her crying and found her snuggled up with the puppies, completely unharmed.
It is thought that the puppies’ mother initially found the baby first and lay down next to her. She still had her umbilical cord attached.
The locals said: ‘At 11 in the morning, we saw that there is a newborn baby girl who was crying and lying alongside puppies in our village.’
‘We panicked and informed the health department before the newborn was taken to the hospital for a further check-up’.
‘It’s possibly the warmth from puppies and their mother itself who had kept this newborn alive.’
The girl, who has been named Akanksha, was incredibly lucky to have survived as the temperatures get very low.
A branch of local government known as the panchayat was contacted when she was found, and they involved the police.
Officers took the child to the hospital so that doctors could make sure she was okay.
One local said: ‘They are not parents, they are criminals. It is a miracle only to find newborn babies surviving when stray dogs are lurking every now and then at the dead of the night’.
An investigation is now underway by police who are also searching to find the child’s parents.