Lal Bihari made countless rounds of police and government offices, but to no avail. Finally he decided to contest elections to draw attention to his problem: He had been declared officially dead.
It took Bihari 16 years to get the government to recognize that he was in fact still alive. Relatives had him falsely proclaimed dead in order to seize his property.
Bihari, who still adds "late" or mritak before his name, is today fighting an even tougher battle -- to get a life for an estimated 40,000 "dead" people in his home state of Uttar Pradesh.
PHOTO: AFP
He founded the Mritak Sangh, or the Association of the Dead, four years ago in an effort to restore dignity to so many blighted lives and to seek compensation from the northern state government for maintaining false records.
The fight is not easy. The victims face the same corruption and indifference which led to their plight in the first case and, deprived of all their possessions, no longer have any resources for legal action.
"I myself had gone to government officials to tell them I am alive. I went to police stations, to revenue courts and even met politicians with the only request to recognize me as a living person," Bihari says.
He says he was declared dead in 1984 by revenue officials in Azamgarh, 300km southeast of Uttar Pradesh state capital Lucknow, after his uncle connived with officials to grab his property.
He discovered his administrative status as dead when he went to officials to try to find out how his uncle had managed to get 16 acres of Bahari's land transferred into his own name.
Bihari employed novel ways to get his name on official records, notably by picking fights so that the police would file a complaint against him ensuring his name entered police files.
But he says the police quickly saw through his gameplan and refused to register cases against him. After much frustration, Bihari hit on the idea of standing for election to draw attention to his misery.
"I contested two elections to tell the world that I am alive and not dead. I lost both the elections but won the bigger battle," he says.
After a 16-year court battle Bihari finally got his true status back in 2000. He is still demanding 200 million rupees (US$5 million) in compensation from the government for his years of torment.
Others such as Mahboob Hasan, 68, who found out he had "died" in 1991, have been less fortunate.
"My son grabbed my property by producing a fake death certificate. I have met officials but the government still refuses to recognize me as alive," he said. "The village head has recognized me as alive, but the revenue officials still consider me a dead man."
The former schoolteacher says even the state chief minister was aghast to hear of his story about how his son sold off the property and migrated to the Gulf trading and tourism hub of Dubai.
Victims such as Hasan are rendered homeless when their property is taken over by relatives, who often pay as little as 50 rupees (about US$1) or a bottle of liquor to obtain a fake death certificate from a corrupt minor official.
"They feel deceived by their loved ones. They are poor and do not have enough money to get a square meal a day, forget about filing court cases," says lawyer S.K. Mishra, who has represented several living dead people in the court.
The state's revenue minister said the government was aware of the issue and working to solve it.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although