A woman was left in excruciating agony because a pair of forceps used during her caesarean were left inside her body for five years.
Mum Harshinia, 30, has filed a complaint against doctors in Kerala, India after the medical implements were left behind when she delivered her baby in 2017.
On September 17, Harshinia was forced to undergo major surgery to have the steel "mosquito artery forceps" removed from her body at the Kozhikode Medical College.
The routinely used medical device looks like scissors but acts more like a clamp to stem blood flow during surgery.
Kerala State Health Minister Veena George, who has ordered a probe into the incident, said in a statement: "Stern action will be taken against those who are responsible."
After two prior caesareans at private hospitals, the woman had her third at the Kozhikode Medical College in November 2017, Indian broadcaster NDTV reported.
Speaking with reporters, she said: "After the third surgery, I began feeling severe pain. I thought it was due to the caesarean surgery.
"I approached many doctors...I thought either I had kidney stones or some sort of cancer."
The pain was so severe she had to use strong antibiotics.
But in the past six months the pain became so excruciating that she sought medical help, thinking it was a urinary infection.
"Apparently, the metal object was poking my urinary bladder and was causing infection. The pain became unbearable," she said.
Doctors gave her a CT scan and found a "metal object" in her stomach, she said.
She added: "But after the CT scan, they told me that there was a metal object in my stomach. They told me that it was poking my bladder and resulting in urinary infection. Doctors used to give me heavy antibiotics to reduce the pain."
It wasn't until she approached doctors at Kozhikode that the chunk of metal was removed.
Kozhikode Medical College said: "We have ordered a probe. After the preliminary inquiry, the medical college superintendent told me that none of their surgical equipment was missing."
"The woman has had two surgeries in private hospitals before coming to medical college."
It took her a few days in hospital to recover after the forcep chunk was removed.
In another bizarre case, an Indian man admitted to hospital with abdominal pain was later found to have 63 spoons in his stomach.
Dr Rakesh Khuran performed the two-hour operation on the 32-year-old man in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India, who spent time in intensive care.
The patient was initially admitted to hospital with a severe stomach ache, but doctors were in for a surprise when they examined him.
They initially thought the pain could have been caused by a tumour, but scans showed a cluster of foreign objects.
The surgeons then made incisions in his abdomen and fished out the metal spoons one by one.
In total, the operation took two hours to remove all of them.
