INDIA: Over 10,000 people, officially declared dead by greedy relatives and corrupt officials working together to take over their property and farm lands in a well-established swindle in north India, are trying desperately to prove that they are indeed alive. Rahul Bedi reports from New Delhi
Around 50 of the "dead" gathered in front of the state assembly in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state, 300 miles east of New Delhi, earlier this week and had their heads shaved as a mark of protest against the administration that refuses to believe that they are alive.
To drive home their point, the protesters also served the traditional funeral lunch to curious passersby in keeping with Hindu custom, but the officials were simply not listening.
"The state refuses to accept that they are alive. If it did that, it would mean alerting the district revenue records and restoring to them their properties.
"That is something dishonest officials do not want to do," Mr Lal Bihari Mritak, secretary of the Society of the Dead said.
"Grasping relatives and unscrupulous officials connive together to declare a person dead after which they tamper with the land deeds and appropriate all the assets," Mritak said.
When the land-owner hears of his "death" and the subsequent transfer of his property, he petitions officials but to little avail.
District courts across the state are hearing cases of these allegedly dead people, but decisions by the states' overburdened and corrupt judiciary can take several decades.