Mumbai, November 16
Actress Aishwarya Rai gave birth to a baby girl at the Seven Hills Hospital in suburban Mumbai early this morning. According to a bulletin put out by the hospital, the delivery was normal and came a few minutes before 10 am. Both the mother and baby are fine, according to the hospital.

“It’s a girl,” tweeted Rai’s husband actor Abhishek Bachchan. He had recently said he wanted a daughter who looked like Aishwarya.

His father and superstar Amitabh Bachchan was equally exuberant. “I AM DADA to the cutest baby girl, A dada ji ... Ecstatic,” the senior Bachchan tweeted.

Aishwarya, 38, developed labour pains around 4 am and was taken to the labour room where the delivery took place after around six hours.

The actress is on the fifth floor of the luxury private hospital in Andheri East.

The hospital had booked three rooms on the floor - one for Aishwarya, the other for the Bachchan family and the third for the Rai family. The entire floor was kept out of bounds for all except the two families.

The hospital has been under tight security for the past three days in expectation of the youngest member of the Bachchan family.

Aishwarya was admitted to the hospital on Monday night, according to her spokesperson.

The Bachchan family had been waiting for the baby’s arrival for a few days and preparing for the child’s welcome. The girl is Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan’s third grandchild, after Agastya and Navya Naveli - children of his daughter Shweta and son-in-law Nikhil Nanda.

Aishwarya tied the knot with Abhishek in April 2007 and rumours about her pregnancy had been doing the rounds ever since.

In June this year, when Amitabh announced her pregnancy through Twitter, it grabbed the headlines.

A 10-point advisory by the Broadcast Editor’s Association (BEA) reportedly asked TV channel heads to curtail media coverage regarding the high-profile delivery.