newborn
A 2-day-old baby was flushed down the toilet at a doctor's clinic in the southern Indian state of Kerala. In the picture, a newborn baby's inked feet are seen after his footprints were taken for the birth certificate, minutes after he was born inside the childbirth unit at the Santa Ana public maternity hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Oct. 19, 2011. Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

A 2-day-old baby girl was flushed down the toilet at a doctor's clinic in the southern Indian state of Kerala. The body of the newborn was found Friday after plumbers were called to help with the clogged toilet.

Police told Indian media Saturday that plumbers were trying to unblock the toilet when they noticed something resembling a ball. When they pulled it out they were shocked to see it was the body of the newborn. The clinic belonged to Dr. Abdul Rehman of Kerala's Palakkad district.

An investigation is currently underway and police are trying to find the newborn's parents, who are believed to have fled. Investigators are also checking records of all the patients, who visited the clinic recently. Authorities believe the parents must have brought the baby to the clinic on the pretext of consultation and later flushed her down the toilet.

Because the placenta of the baby was intact, there was a possibility that the mother delivered her inside the washroom, local media NDTV reported.

After the body was recovered, the doctor filed a complaint of unnatural death. An autopsy was being conducted to find details and the cause of death.

"There wasn't much of a foul smell emanating from the toilet. The body hadn't decomposed when we recovered it. But the baby's placenta was intact and there was blood inside the commode," police told local media the News Minute. "Seeing the color of the blood, the domestic worker mistook it for muddy water. The house is located in a large plot and there are many houses nearby. The doctor's house is situated around 100 meters away from the road. We are investigating all possibilities."

In another incident earlier this year, the body of a newborn baby was found wrapped in a plastic bag hidden inside an aeroplane's toilet. The body was found by cleaners after the jet landed at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Indonesian police later arrested the mother of the baby, who gave birth to the child mid-air.

In a horrific incident involving a newborn in India last month, a monkey snatched a toddler in Cuttack, Odisha. After nearly 24-hour of search, the body of the newborn was found inside a well near his house.

“The monkey took the baby from inside a mosquito net. It [the monkey] was spotted by Sarojini [the child’s mother], who immediately had raised an alarm, but the creature jumped over the roof and disappeared from her view,” the child's aunt Rajnandini Nayak told reporters, according to local media Indian Express.