Answer

Indeed, that’s a justified reference. I very much doubt that he actually blinded him, just as I doubt whether Rabbi Zeira was really slaughtered at the Purim feast, or whether the students of Hillel and Shammai actually killed one another. There are descriptions meant to leave an impression, not to provide historical testimony.
For the matter itself, one can discuss a damager who causes harm by occult or metaphysical means. As is well known, people have already discussed creating a person by means of a Divine Name, and rescue by occult means (whether it overrides the Sabbath, with proof from David’s flooding of the channels in the passage in Makkot). But none of this is really necessary, and it seems to me that here too the matter will remain dependent on reasoning. If you understand that harm caused in a mystical way is basically an activation of heaven, then it would seem that the damager is exempt as indirect causation (and perhaps even worse than that); but if this is a normal mode of causing harm, then there is logic to obligate him.
Now I thought that perhaps one could learn from the law of the evil eye (someone who stands over his fellow’s field while it is full of standing grain), but Maimonides omitted it, apparently because in his view there is no such damage. And perhaps indeed the whole discussion is about a situation that does not exist (mystical damage).