Nobody has reported him missing, nor have any of the scores of survivors who trawl the city’s hospitals still looking for friends or family recognised the boy with no name.

Yet doctors say that since they showed his photograph on a local television station in the hope of tracing anyone who knows him, they have been besieged by calls offering the boy a home.

He lays huddled under a yellow and blue checked blanket, watched over by Dhirendra Charaniya, who can only wait for the swelling on the boy’s brain to ease in the hope that he may wake from a coma.

“He had no identification and the policeman who spotted him in the debris beside the railway track thought he was dead. He was about to throw a sheet over his body and move on to help passengers trapped inside the carriages when he saw the boy’s eyes flicker,” Dr Charaniya said.

As he stares at the boy’s X-rays, Dr Charaniya adds: “I don’t know how long he might stay like this. All we can do is hope, but he has already become something of a symbol for us of this tragedy and proved himself a survivor.”

The succession of dignitaries, celebrities and political leaders who have been visiting the city’s hospitals have made a point of looking in on him.

Ministers have pledged to meet all his medical bills, no matter how long his hospital stay might last.

Police and social workers who visted the trauma ward in the northern suburb of Borivali suspect that he may be one of the legion of street children, many of them orphaned or abandoned, who ply their trade on the city’s commuter line selling anything they can find, or even using their own ragged shirts to dust down seats for passengers in the first-class compartments that were the target for the bombers.

Medics believe that the boy is no older than 12. His jaw has been smashed, he has lost most of his front teeth and his mouth is stitched along his bottom lip, but staff say that he has no other injuries, suggesting that he may have been struck in the face by debris.

His hands are still covered in blood. His pale blue pyjama top is torn and far too big for him.

Dr Charaniya said: “We are confident there is no serious brain damage, but he will need operations to his face. He can make a full recovery.”

The trauma surgeon and his team had to deal with 105 victims of the carnage, and saved all but 28 of them, including this unnamed youngster, who is listed as being in a critical condition. Nursing staff were so upset at having to refer to him as Unknown Boy, Bed 8 — which is all that is marked on his file — that they have begun calling him Rakish, a popular name locally and one the staff routinely use for abandoned babies left at the hospital.

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