Berhampur (India) - A man (24) from India lived with a piece of knife in his body for three years. The shocked doctors found the dangerous foreign object when they tried to find out why the 24-year-old had suddenly started coughing up blood.

When the Indian man named Santosh Das was struggling with a cough and fever around a year ago, doctors initially suspected that he was suffering from tuberculosis. According tothe Hindustan Times, the 24-year-old had to undergo treatment for his alleged illness for nine months, but there was no improvement.

When he suddenly started coughing up blood, his family took him to hospital, where they decided to take an X-ray. The doctors made a shocking discovery : there was a foreign body about eight centimetres long in the man's lungs.

The man was then operated on immediately. As it turned out, the object was a piece of knife stuck in the right lung. Patient Santosh Das immediately knew how the knife got into his body:

About three years ago, he was working as a laborer in Bengaluru and was the victim of a brutal knife attack there. After treatment in a local hospital, the man was fine for the next two years.

Then, all of a sudden, the strange symptoms appeared.

Thanks to the operation, the 24-year-old is now free of pain. "A group of around eight doctors from the CTVS and anaesthesia department, nurses and medical assistants performed the operation and successfully removed the sharp piece of metal," explains Dr. Sarada Prasanna Sahoo from the MKCG Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur.

To the surprise of the doctors, the piece of knife had not damaged any vital organs despite its sharp edges.