India: 40-year-old in critical condition after cutting off tongue to offer to goddess

An Indian villager is in critical condition after cutting off his tongue to offer it as a “sacrifice” to a goddess at a Hindu temple.

The self-mutilation of the 40-year-old man, who used a knife, caused panic among the crowd of worshipers who had flocked to the temple in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

The man and his wife first performed a ritual and then he cut out his tongue and placed it on the temple gate, said a police inspector, Abhilas Tiwari. “The police who were in the temple ran to him and took him to a hospital, with the help of other believers,” he added.

The wife explained to the police that her husband “sacrificed” his tongue to appease a goddess, without elaborating.

Such self-mutilations still occur today in some parts of India, where much of the population still believes in superstitions and performs strange acts to appease the gods. At least two similar incidents were reported last year. In both cases, they were young men in their 20s who cut out their tongues. In 2020 a Hindu priest decapitated a villager, claiming that a god had come to him in a dream and instructed him to sacrifice him.