Man Slashes Tongue, Kin Gives WC Spin

By J Shanmugha Sundaram

Published: 27th March 2015

VELLORE:A 27-year-old mason’s  tongue was cut in an apparent accident, but his relatives claimed he did it as an offering in Vediyappan Temple in Ponneri for Team India to maintain its streak in quest for the World Cup.

Sudhakar, a resident of Mittunakuppam village was provided first-aid at the Government Hospital in Vaniyambadi and was later referred to the Government Vellore Medical College Hospital for further treatment.

Sudhakar

The facts leading up to the injury remain contradictory. Doctors, who treated Sudhakar, and the police claimed he had severed his tongue when he fell from a tree with a sickle lodged in his mouth.  His relatives claimed he had offered the tongue to the presiding deity in the Vediyappan Temple for the Indian cricket team to emerge victorious over Australia. According to his relatives, he had communicated through gestures that he had sacrificed his tongue.

Jolarpet police, after conducting inquiries, said, the youth’s tongue had been cut accidentally when he fell from a papaya tree and rejected the theory spread by relatives.

The doctors in GVMCH also stated that the youth had communicated through gestures that he had climbed up the tree with a sickle clenched in his mouth.

He slipped from the tree and fell. In the fall, his tongue was severed, they said.

Sudhakar had reportedly gone to the Vediyappan Temple around 8.30 am on Thursday when the accident occurred. Sudhakar’s brother received a call from a woman who presumably saw him bleeding profusely from his mouth. Using Sudhakar’s phone she phoned his younger brother, Raju (22).

“He began playing and watching cricket five, six years ago. He is crazy about the game and never misses a game played by the Indian cricket team,” Raju said.

“We asked one of our relatives to go to the temple and look for the severed tongue (in the hope of having it stitched back). The relative called back at about 12 noon and said that the tongue was found in the temple. When we asked the doctors later they said that the tongue cannot be stitched back,” said one of Sudhakar’s close relatives, Boopalan.