Girl claims snake wed her, put vermilion on forehead

Mother of the girl shows the vermilion put by the ‘snake husband’ on the girl’s forehead. She said the vermilion cannot be removed.

Superstition has driven a couple in a Chhattisgarh village to believe their daughter’s claim that she has been married to an “ichhadhari nag” (a snake which takes the form of a human being according to its wishes). Sapan Sijha (58), a resident of Kaskela in north Chhattisgarh district of Surajpur, has been claiming before the curious visitors to his house that the vermilion put on the forehead of her daughter by her “snake husband” refused to wash out and that she used to disappear to an unknown place in the early hours every day for some time. “The vermilion put on my daughter’s forehead could not be wiped out. Sometimes the colour of the vermilion turns deep and sometimes light. My mother, with whom my daughter shared her bed, told me that she quietly disappeared every morning and resurfaced after some time,” Sapan told the mediapersons.

According to his daughter Anita, on the evening of July 15, when she was taking a nap, a snake appeared before her and asked her to follow her to its world, the “Naglok,” after taking on human form.

The snake then married her there by putting vermillion on her forehead and warned that she should not marry any other man, except a particular youth, whom it did not identify, in her life.

“We were a couple in the last birth and now we have been reunited,” she said.

“The girl seems to be suffering from acute depression. She needs counseling from a psychiatrist,” clinical psychologist P.K. Mishra told this newspaper while analyzing her case.