A mum and dad in India told of their pride after raising the world's biggest albino family.
White-skinned Indian couple Roseturai Pullan, 50, and wife Mani, 45, have EIGHT other family members who are albinos.
They have overcome years of prejudice and hardship — but now the unique ten-strong group are in line for official recognition with a Guinness World Record.
Sons Vijay, 25, Shankar, 24 and Ramkishan, 19, and daughters Renu, 23, Deepa, 21 and Pooja, 18, inherited their albinism.
Renu wed another albino Rosheh, 27, and their two-year-old son Dharamraj also has the condition.
The family — who live in a crammed one-bedroom flat in Delhi — all have pale skin, white hair and poor vision, a side-effect of being albinos.
Roseturai told The Sun: "I've heard people call us 'angrez', which means 'English'. It's hard for people to understand we're born and bred Indian.
"All we know is that we can't see properly, and we can't sit under the sun for long, but we live the best we can."
Roseturai and Mani had an arranged marriage in 1983. They moved from Tamil Nadu in southern India to Delhi, where Roseturai sells eggs from a stall.
He said: "Our parents thought it best we marry as we were 'the same'. In South India we were told if you marry a person with albinism it signals good luck and riches.
"Well, that hasn't been true of us yet. We had a very tough life, especially in the South where people thought we had a disease and treated us like outsiders.
"People in Delhi are a little more open-minded, but many think we're foreigners."
He vowed: "Albinism won't get us down."
Mani admits she went to hospital for a hysterectomy after her first child was born, determined not to bring any more albinos into the world. She said: "I didn't want my children to suffer as we did, but the doctor got scared just looking at me and sent me home. I never went back and have had many children, all with albinism. Now I see it as a gift from god."
Mani, who has an albino sister, added: "I was teased and called various names as I grew up. It made me cry so many times. It's hard living as we do in a country like India, but we're still happy now."
She said their children — who all went to a school for the blind and use a magnifier to read — have already accepted they will not get good jobs due to their sight problems. Oldest son Vijay said: "I'm qualified to work with computers, but my vision means a job is hard to find." He added that when he has saved enough to wed he wants to have an albino wife.
"It's easier if I marry a girl with the same condition as me. I just need to find her."
The family hope they will soon be officially awarded a Guinness World Record.
The next biggest albino families — six-strong — live in the US and Canada. Guinness World Records last night said staff would be contacting the Pullans to verify the record.
The family are looking forward to global recognition. Roseturai said: "We're a great family so it'd be nice for people to know who we are." - www.thesun.co.uk
