Sunny Leone 'warding off evil eyes' from crops in rural Andhra Pradesh

Nellore: It’s bizarre but true. A farmer in Andhra Pradesh's Nellore district has been using a poster of actor Sunny Leone clad in a red bikini to ward off evil eyes from his large field of crops.

45-year-old Chenchu Reddy of Banda Kindi Palle village is not a fan of the Indian-American porn-star, but has found her picture effective to keep the "evil eyes" of fellow villagers off his bumper crop of cauliflower and cabbages.

“This year, I have a good crop on 10 acres. This has been attracting unnecessary attention of villagers and passersby. To ward off their evil eye, I thought of this idea of putting up the big flax poster of Sunny Leone a couple of days ago,” he said on Tuesday.

Apparently, this strategy is working as Leone is attracting people's attention.

“The trick has worked. Nobody is looking at my crop now,” Reddy said.

In rural India, farmers often use straw-filled scarecrows with an upside down clay pitcher resembling a human head to scare birds away from fields.

Superstition-steeped farmers also use ugly, fearsome dolls called "bommalu" in Telugu to block the evil eye.

But this is probably the first time that the poster of a porn-star in a bikini has been used for the purpose.

Reddy also does not care about agriculture or police officials finding his act indecent.

“The officials never bother to come to our fields to find out our problems. Why should they have any objection?” he asked.