Rajasthan man in hospital with 75 pins in his body, doctors baffled

KOTA: A human pin cushion, that’s what Badrilal Meena of Rajasthan has turned into.

The 56-year-old railway employee has 75 stationery pins embedded deep under the skin of his neck, forearms and legs, a case doctors are finding it hard to pin down. There’re no visible marks to suggest the inchlong pins were pierced into his skin; either by him or someone else. And the man from Barda village in Bundi district doesn’t know how he got them.

“There is a possibility that the patient or someone else pierced the pins into his body. There are no pins or perforations visible in the stomach, oesophagus or intestines to suggest he swallowed them,” said B Panda, the surgeon treating Meena at Kota railway hospital.

His condition was detected at a private hospital in Kota this April when he went there to treat his aching right foot and diabetes.

X-ray tests revealed a mess of pins grafted under his skin, mostly horizontally. But some around his neck were pierced straight into his Adam’s apple and gullet, which made swallowing food a torture.

“I feel pain and difficulty in swallowing food,” said Meena, who suffers from anxiety and insomnia too.

And he kept repeating that he has no idea how he got the pins, which are making him ill.

Kota’s leading laparoscopic surgeon Dinesh Jindal said the patient could be suffering from a psychiatric condition such as an obsessive compulsive disorder that sometimes compels a person to do awkward and harmful things.