Anand ST Das By

Express News Service

PATNA: A teenage girl in Bihar’s Darbhanga district was so desperate to placate Goddess Durga that she scooped out her left eye at a temple to offer it to the Goddess on Saturday.

Komal Kumari, 18, perpetrated the extreme act on herself in front of the idol of Goddess Durga at a temple in Sirua village under Baheri police station. Devotees present at the temple at the time were shocked to see the girl bleeding profusely from her eye and trying to get closer to the idol.

“She was seen holding her right fist over her left eye from which drops of blood were rolling down. The shocked devotees stopped her from reaching the idol of Goddess Durga,” said Sanjay Kumar, the station-house-officer of Baheri police station.

It was not immediately known if the girl had hurt her eyes with her own fingers or with the help of a spoon or a sharp-edged object. Police spoke to some of the devotees present at the spot, but no intelligible explanation was offered by any. Some devotees even claimed she had entirely taken out her eyeball and holding it in her hand.

Komal was rushed to Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) by some devotees and temple officials. “Doctors operated on her eye and managed to repair the outward injured parts, but they said the damage had caused the girl to lose vision in that eye,” said the SHO.

Known in the locality as an unassuming girl, Komal had failed in her matriculation examination twice. Her father Arun Kumar Singh, a farmer and resident of Sirua village, said the family was too shocked and yet to ascertain what prompted her to take such an extreme step.

Komal had been an ardent devotee of Goddess Durga for the past ten years and had been reading out aloud the scriptural praises to the Goddess every day, villagers told police. She also often told her friends that Goddess Durga had appeared in her dreams a number of times and asked her to offer Her an organ.

“Such thinking and action are clearly an act of delusion, which could originate from a distorted perception of reality. What this girl did is an extreme case of superstition,” said Dr Binda Singh, a Patna-based clinical psychologist.