Human pincushion back with 150 pins, doctors suspect self abuse

NEW DELHI: In April this year, Badrilal Meena’s CT scans showed there were 75 pins embedded in his body. Six hospitals, four months and one surgery later the number of pins increased to 150 and Meena has no idea how they got there.

The man, who is from Barda Village in Kota, underwent two surgeries last week at Asian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Faridabad where around 100 pins were removed. Surgeons, however, suspect that Badrilal suffers from mental illness and had been piercing the pins into his body himself.

“I do not know how the pins got in there,” said Badrilal. Even his son and wife claim they don’t know when and how the pins got there. Doctors now say he will undergo psychiatric evaluation after recovery if he agrees to it. Badrilal’s curious case was first detected at a private hospital in Kota where he had gone complaining of foot ache and diabetes. He has visited six hospitals since and lost over 30kgs.

Doctors say he arrived at the Asian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Faridabad last fortnight complaining of breathlessness and throat pain. In the CT scan before the surgery, Badrilal’s neck looked like a pin-cushion. He had more than 150 pins in his throat, elbows, abdomen and ankles. 10 of these were piercing his windpipe, three going through his food pipe, one in the vocal cord and two cutting through his carotid artery — the main artery that supplies blood to the brain. Surgeries were performed on June 29 and July 2 to remove pins from his neck and abdomen.

Earlier, seven pins had been extracted from his neck and four from the upper and lower limbs at the Northern Railway Central Hospital in Delhi. He was then referred to Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, psychiatry department. “We wanted to admit him for psychiatric evaluation.

He kept denying there was any problem and refused to be admitted,” said Dr Smita Deshpande, RML Hospital.