A ten-day-old baby boy died after being gnawed by rats in a hospital’s neo-natal intensive care unit in the Indian City of Guntur.
His parents claim rodents chewed the sick infant’s left eye, face, chest and hands after climbing into his incubator.
His distraught mother Chavali Lakshmi accused doctors of ignoring her pleas to keep rats out of the ward and failing to treat the child when he was found covered in blood.
She said that days earlier her son’s toes were bitten by the vermin but medics did nothing to stop it happening again.
The case has caused outrage in India with protests at the clinic in of Guntur.
Ministers have ordered an urgent probe and three hospital staff have been suspended.