Karnataka man gouges his eye out to please the deity

In a bizarre case, a 50-year-old man from a village in Karnataka’s Bagalkot taluk gouged his eye out and placed it before the feet of the local deity.

Mudukappa Yallappa, who was an ardent devotee of the local deity Shankarayya Ajja for a long time, went to the Shankarayya Swamy Math in Adgal village on Thursday and began the worship by singing bhajans.

According to locals, Yellappa suddenly whipped out a knife, removed his right eye and placed it at the feet of the Shakarayya Ajja’s idol in the Math even as other devotees were stunned over the incident.

“It all happened in a matter of seconds”, Somappa, a resident of the village, told reporters. “He was raising slogans in praise of the Lord. We thought he was singing bhajans. But, suddenly he pulled out a knife, gouged out his right eye”, said Somappa, who was present in the Math when the incident happened.

Though the other devotees rushed to him after hearing his cries of agony, refused to budge and remained adamantly before the deity for more than five hours singing bhajans even as ants started swarming the gouged out eye placed before the deity.

As news about the incident spread, people from the village and neighbouring areas made a beeline to the Math and paid their respects to Yallappa with folded hands. But, police arrived on the scene and forcibly took him to the hospital for treatment.

Doctors treated the wound created by the gouging of the eye and discharged him. Though Yellappa had lost some blood when he gouged his eye out, there is no danger to his life, the doctors told the police.

Back in the village, Yellappa claimed that Shankarayya Ajja came in his dream and demanded his eye. ‘I only obeyed his order”, Yellappa told reporters. Yellappa’s wife Hanumavva defended her husband’s strange act. “What can you do when the Lord demands it?”, she said.
Yellappa’s weird act has brought to people’s mind a mythological character Bedara Kannappa, who had similiarly gouged out his eyes to enable the Lord to see.