It began as a simple stomach ache. But when things got worse, Jyoti Kumar went to a doctor who made the surprising discovery.

"We found a lump on the lower-right side of her abdomen, and feared it was cancer. A CT scan then revealed that the lump was made of hard, calcified matter," a doctor told The Daily Mail.

"But it was only after the patient underwent an MRI that we could make out that the mass was in fact a child's skeleton. The amniotic fluid that protects the fetus might have been absorbed and the soft tissues liquefied over time with only a bag of bones with some fluid remaining."

The remains were the skeleton of a baby lost to an ectopic pregnancy the woman had experienced when she was 24 years old.

The International Business Times reports Kumar "knew that the baby had died, and that she would need an operation."

Frightened about the prospect of surgery, she ran away from the hospital to seek treatment for the pain elsewhere.

It worked for several years. However, when the pain returned, and worsened, she opted to have the skeleton removed.

Doctors in Nagpur, India, believe it to the world's longest case of ectopic pregnancy.