He drinks about seven litres of milk, consumes one kg of rice, packets of biscuits, fruits and vegetable - all in one day.

The menu would read all right for an adult, but Lokman Hakim is all of a little over 11 months old. And he weighs more than 22 kg - extraordinary by all means.

This special baby's father, a landless peasant, who now works in a textile mill in Surat, Gujarat, is at his wit's end trying to satisfy the voracious appetite of his only child.

Lokman's mother Ganera Bibi, a timid looking woman who tries hard not to look tired lifting her baby in her arms, says Lokman was born a normal child, but started to grow abnormally after he turned three months old.

As news of the `fat child' spread, villagers flocked Lokman's house in Pardiar village in West Bengal's Murshidabad district.

The house is always full of curious onlookers who watch the baby feed on an afternoon meal of one kg of ground rice mixed with litres of milk and cooked vegetables and fruits.

"If I don't feed him this much, he begins to wail and will not stop till he has been given the whole amount," says Ganera Bibi.

Doctors treating Lokman say the child's condition could have been caused by a change in his brain cells or a hormonal disturbance.

"This is a special condition and we can't say anything before a full range of complicated tests are carried out," says S Sarkar, the district's chief health officer.