'Dead' Man Stuns Family After Returning Home A Week After Funeral

A 40-year-old Indian man who was presumed dead stunned his family after he showed up at their doorstep, a week after they had mistakenly performed his funeral.

The hilarious goof-up took place at the state-run RK Hospital at Rajsamand district in Rajasthan, India. The hospital had reportedly declared the body of a Goverdhan Prajapat, a man who was being treated at the hospital, as "unidentified" and later Omkar Lal Gadulia’s relatives mistakenly took possession of the remains thinking it was their missing loved one, The Hindu reported.

As it turns out, Gadulia, 40 and an alcoholic, had gone to Udaipur without informing his family on May 11. There, Gadulia was admitted to a hospital after a drunken binge owing to some liver-related problems.

On the same day, Prajapat was taken from the Mohi area to the RK Hospital by an ambulance service arranged by public representatives. However, he, unfortunately, died upon arrival at the facility, The Times Of India reported.

“We had got a letter from the hospital authorities that a body was lying unclaimed at the mortuary for three days. We then circulated photographs of the deceased man on various fronts to identify the body,” Kankroli Police Station SHO Yogendra Vyas told PTI.

More than a dozen people reportedly came to the hospital on May 15 to identify the body, he said. Gadulia’s family members had wrongly identified the remains to be that of Gadulia after seeing a similar scar on his right hand.

The police handed over the body to the family without conducting any post-mortem and DNA tests. The family arranged Gadulia’s funeral and final rites on the same day, May 15, IndiaTV reported.

“The body was identified by the family members. DNA testing and post-mortem by a medical board is conducted when the body is unidentified following which the body is usually handed over to municipality for cremation,” Vyas said.

Gadulia returned home a week later on May 23 and was shocked to realize that he was believed to be dead. The police then launched an investigation into the matter and identified that the body which Gadulia’s family had cremated belonged to Goverdhan Prajapat.

The hospital's authorities reportedly admitted their mistake and acknowledged that the whole kerfuffle was the result of a lapse on the part of their nursing and mortuary staff.

Prajapat is survived by three young children. After his health condition deteriorated, the children were sent to a welfare home His wife had reportedly left him due to his recurrent health issues.