Indian ‘Covid victim comes back from the dead’ two years after bumbling health officials told his family his body had been cremated
- Kamlesh Patidar’s family was told that he had passed away after being infected with Covid
- But two years later, Patidar appeared in the doorway of his family’s home
For two years now, the family of an Indian man has been grappling with their grief after officials told them he had died of Covid and his body had been cremated along with hundreds of other victims during the height of the pandemic.
But far from being dead, Kamlesh Patidar appeared in the doorway of his family’s home on Saturday – two years after they performed his last rituals.
His wife, Rekha Patidar, froze at the sight of the man she thought had died and burst into tears.
“I’ve been living a widow’s life since February 2021,” she told the Times of India. “We had performed all the rituals that are done after the death of a family member.
“Some of our relatives even still came to our house to offer condolences as they had not been able to visit us during the pandemic.”
Patidar, aged between 30 and 40, had fallen ill during the second wave of the pandemic and was hospitalized in the western city of Vadodara, where bumbling health officials pronounced him dead.
But far from being dead, Kamlesh Patidar (pictured) appeared in the doorway of his family’s home on Saturday – two years after they performed his last rites
The officials showed his family a body under the sheet and told them it was Patidar before he was cremated at the height of the second wave of the pandemic in February 2021.
“We trusted the doctors,” said Mahesh Patida, a family member. “We have accepted our fate and returned to live in sorrow.”
But two years later, in the early hours of Saturday morning, the father of two walked through the door of his uncle’s house in Sardarpur, a city in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
“Rekha was also overcome with emotion and could not speak,” his father Gendalal Patidar, 69, told the Times of India. Other family members shared how they thought ‘they saw things while they were half asleep’.
After the tears and screams subsided from his relieved family, Patidar told them that he had been kidnapped by a gang who allegedly injected him with drugs and kept him unconscious.
“He told me that after recovering from Covid, he was detained in Ahmedabad by half a dozen persons,” his relative said. “They injected him with drugs and kept him unconscious the whole time.”
A corpse waits to be cremated as multiple funeral pyres of those who died of COVID-19 burn at a site converted into a crematorium for mass cremation of coronavirus victims, in New Delhi, India, in April 2021
Patidar claimed that he managed to escape from the gang while being taken in a car to an unknown location. The gang reportedly stopped at a roadside hotel for snacks when Patidar managed to run for a near bus unnoticed.
“He’s still in a semi-conscious state,” his relative said.
Police are now investigating Patidar’s claim that he was held hostage by the gang.
More than half a million people have died due to Covid in India since the start of the pandemic, according to the World Health Organization.
The country has been ravaged by the virus, with footage showing the bodies of coronavirus victims being piled into overcrowded ambulances to be taken to the crematorium.
India was in the eye of the global Covid storm – and during the second wave in 2021. In Delhi and Mumbai, funeral pyres burned around the clock.
India’s Ministry of Health has released guidelines for the cremation of people who have died from Covid, with special measures to prevent possible re-infection.
In April 2021, families were told they could cremate or bury victims on their own farm, land or garden. The home ceremonies had to comply with health guidelines, but it was hoped the move would ease the pressure on crematoriums and gravediggers.