LUCKNOW: 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 Lal 16 years to get the government to recognise that he was in fact still alive. Relatives had him falsely proclaimed dead in order to seize his property.

Lal, who still adds ‘late’ 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.

He founded 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 government.

The fight is not easy. The victims face the same corruption 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 recognise me as a living person,” Lal says.

He says he was declared dead in 1984 by revenue officials in Azamgarh 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 his land transferred into his own name.

Lal 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 game-plan and refused to register cases against him.

After much frustration, Lal 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 Lal finally got his true status back in 2000.

He is still demanding 200 million rupees in compensation from the government for his years of torment.

Others such as Mahboob Hasan, 68, who found out that 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 recognise me as alive,” he says.

“The village head has recognised me as alive, but the revenue officials still consider me a dead man.”—AFP