A woman and her newborn, whom she had just delivered on a train, lay unattended for half an hour at Barasat station on Thursday morning.

The station master of the “model railway station”, on being informed about the woman by hawkers, made an announcement over the public address system, asking the RPF and the medical officer to come to her help.

No one turned up, though a senior railway official said the doctor at the station is on duty round-the-clock.

A Class IV employee arrived on the spot after half an hour and took the woman and the child to Barasat district hospital.

Saraswati Das, 27, boarded a women’s compartment of a Hasnabad-bound local at Sealdah early on Thursday.

Around 6am, while the train was entering Barasat, she gave birth to the baby boy. The other passengers of the compartment helped Saraswati get off the train with the infant.

“Saraswati was precariously holding the child, its umbilical chord still intact. While the other women who helped her get off returned to the compartment, she sat down under a shade on platform four,” said Gobinda Bhadra, who runs a tea stall on the platform.

The woman was bleeding profusely. Bhadra and a few hawkers called a woman vendor, Alpana Purti, who covered Saraswati’s body with newspapers and wrapped the baby in a piece of cloth.

The hawkers then contacted the station master, who made the announcement seeking help from the RPF and the doctor.

“The doctor was not available, so a Class IV employee, M.C. Dolui, was sent to the spot,” said station manager C.S. Bhowmik.

Alpana said Dolui had come without a stretcher and asked Saraswati, who was barely conscious, to walk with him out of the station.

“We protested, forcing him to bring a stretcher. The woman and the child were carried out of the station on the stretcher and taken to the district hospital on a van,” she added.

“We admitted both the mother and the child. All precautions are being taken to ensure the child does not suffer from any infection,” said Ranjan Majumder, the superintendent of the hospital.

Saraswati told hospital officials that she was coming to visit her sister, who lives close to Barasat hospital.

“We can’t talk to her in detail, as she is in a daze. Once she recovers, we will ask her the address of her sister and get in touch with the family,” said a hospital official.