Doctors in India have successfully operated on a young girl born with four arms and four legs to give her the chance of a normal life.

Lakshmi Tatma, 2, was born suffering from a rare condition known as isciopagus, in which she was born attached to a partially-formed twin. The condition occurs in fewer than one in 50,000 births, and extreme examples like Lakshmi are very rare.

A team of around 30 medics spent more than a day carefully detaching what amounted to Lakshmi Tatma’s headless identical twin sister who was joined to her at the pelvis.

The trickiest parts of the operation were to transplant one of her kidneys, which was partially in the body of her twin, and to reconstruct the veins and blood vessels shared by both bodies.

“It went very well,” said Mamta Patil, a doctor involved in the surgery at Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore in south India.

“She’ll be in intensive care for the next 48 hours.”

The risky operation began early yesterday morning. Lakshmi, named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, was expected to be in the operating theatre for 40 hours, but the surgery was over after 27.

Doctors said the surgery was worth the risk, saying that Lakshmi, who could not walk on her deformed limbs, would not otherwise have much chance of living past adolescence.

“We have been told that she can lead a normal life after the operation. I am just praying for her,” Poonam, Lakshmi’s mother, told reporters.

Lakshmi’s parents are poor labourers from Bihar state in northern India, where local villagers regarded the eight-limbed little girl as a goddess.

Others had a more sinister interest in Lakshmi - her parents told newspapers that they had refused offers from circus owners to buy their daughter.

Besides the removal of the extra limbs, Lakshmi’s deformed pelvis and spine were corrected, and redundant extra organs removed, doctors said. She will now need extensive skin grafts.

The hospital said it is covering the cost of the surgery. It took up Lakshmi's case after orthopaedic surgeon Dr Sharan Patil read of the little girl's story in a local newspaper and decided to offer her medical help free of charge.

Times Recommends

• It’s only Brits who don’t appreciate me, says Blair
• Party’s over for Greek graspers
• White House tightens security for Xmas marathon