In an extremely rare case, a 29- year-old man, who had sought cure for infertility, was found to have non-functioning female reproductive organs including the uterus.

Doctors at the government-run JJ Hospital operated on him last month and removed the unwanted organs. The condition is so rare that so far only 200 such cases have been found, said Dr Venkat Gite, head of the urology department at the hospital.

The surgery was carried out on June 26 under Gite's supervision. "We removed a non-functional womb (uterus), fallopian tubes, cervix and partial vagina from his body. His recovery is good," Dr Gite said. "As per my information, so far only 200 such cases have been found. This condition is called Persistent Mullerian Duct Syndrome," he said. "The body scan showed that the patient's testes were still in the abdomen. There is a surgical solution for this.

But when we started the operation, we found a uterus-like structure inside," Gite said. "MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan showed that he also had parts of other female reproductive organs such as fallopian tubes, cervix and vagina," Gite said. Though the surgery was a success, the man would not be able to have children as he suffers from azoospermia, where the semen contains no sperm, the doctor said.