Sarala Chhetri lies unconscious at her father’s home in Manadara. Picture by Suman Tamang

Manadara (Darjeeling), Dec 13: A 25-year-old woman suffering from a heart condition had her chest gashed on Wednesday night in an “operation” her parents attributed to the “Sai Baba”.

Sarala Chhetri, a devotee of the godman from Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh, lay unconscious in her father’s house in this remote village in Darjeeling subdivision, as hundreds flocked to witness the “divine intervention”.

Many carried flowers and paid their obeisance as they stared through a small window at the married woman lying motionless in bed, with a T-shaped gash on her chest, stitched and bandaged. No one was allowed into the room.

Local youths acted as “volunteers,” making the visitors take off their shoes before they entered the house to go to the window to peer in.

Visitors filed in and out in complete silence as the house turned into a “shrine” overnight.

The woman has been living with her well-heeled parents since she was married off to a landed farmer from Nepal seven years ago. Her father said his daughter, who had no child, lived with them because Nepal’s climate had not suited her. She had a gall bladder operation last year.

Hari Chhetri, her 36-year-old husband from Nepal, was in town as Sarala was to go to Vellore for treatment yesterday. “My father-in-law and I slept in the same room since my wife was not well. But I had no idea what happened.”

When he woke up around 4 am yesterday, the man said he “found my wife operated upon and her chest bandaged”. He said he had not heard any sound earlier, though.

The husband said the gash in his wife’s chest was six inches deep. He acknowledged that his wife remained unconscious during the better part of the day, despite “the divine operation”.

“She has not spoken to anyone even when she came to briefly, before passing out again,” the man said.

Madan Kumar Katwal, the woman’s father, a prosperous businessman, said her daughter was suffering from a heart ailment detected by a cardiologist from Vellore a year ago. He said he was to leave with his daughter for Vellore today.

“But in the morning, we found that she had been operated on. We don’t know who had done the operation and how. It is nothing but the divine intervention, I mean, intervention of Sai Baba,’’ the father said.

As the news of the “miracle” operation broke yesterday morning, local residents thronged the house.

After a local channel showed the apparently injured woman on cable, people came rushing in today from places as far as Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong.

The family members would not let the people into the room the woman was kept in. But they put the blood-soaked cottonwool used in the so-called operation on display outside.

But not everyone buys the miracle theory. The family, curiously, has not sent for any doctors to examine the woman who seemed to be in a coma.

A local doctor, who asked not to be named, called for an immediate medical check-up to determine her condition. “I saw the wound on her chest on cable, but you would not know how deep it is unless you examine her.”

He said it was impossible for even a surgeon to operate on her in the house, without medical facilities. “The woman did not appear to be “stable”.

Sisir Dewan, president of the Darjeeling District Sai Samity, refused to comment. “The entire village appears to have known that she had a heart ailment, but then you don’t know what exactly happened.”

Griffith High School headmaster L. Thapa, a local resident, said doctors should examine her thoroughly to “determine what happened to her.” Thapa, who had tutored Sarala before her marriage, said she had always been religious. “She used to claim that she could predict things.”