Indian family keeps body of man for 18 months thinking he will wake up one day
A combo image shows the body kept at a room in Kanpur.
An Indian family from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, has lived with the body of a family member for more than a year, refusing to acknowledge his death.
Vimlesh Dixit died in April of last year, due to sudden cardiac respiratory syndrome on April 22, 2021, and since then family members have been sleeping next to him, believing that he is only in a coma, and that he will wake up one day.
Vimlesh, an income tax officer in Ahmedabad, was hospitalized on April 19, 2021, and was pronounced dead just three days later.
The hospital handed a death certificate to the man's family, but the family members refused to believe his death, and instead of burying him, they brought him home and looked after him, as if he would wake up later.
The authorities took the man’s body a few days ago, when a team was sent from his workplace to investigate his prolonged absence, because the family had not told his workplace that he had died.
The workplace said he got infected with the Corona virus.
The person died on April 22, 2021 during the second wave of Covid-19, and the chief medical officer in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, said: “The man suffered from bilateral pneumonia, and the papers confirmed that the hospital issued a death certificate for this reason.”
His family, consisting of his wife, parents and brothers, took care of him, cleaning his body with Dettol disinfectant three times a day, and changing his clothes daily with the air conditioning turned on for 24 hours, to stop the growth of bacteria from the body and prevent the rotting process.
A police officer who investigated the case said: "Whenever the Labor Office asked the family where he was, they said that Vimlesh was ill, and the family brought oxygen cylinders and told the locals that he was in a coma and was being treated at home."
