'Dead' man found alive after 7 hours in mortuary freezer

Moradabad: In a bizarre incident, a 40-year-old man was kept in a mortuary freezer for almost seven hours before he was taken out alive.

According to reports, Srikesh Kumar, an electrician, was hit by a speeding motorbike following which he was taken to the district hospital on Thursday night. The doctors had declared him dead. The following day, the hospital staff put the body in the freezer.

Nearly seven hours later, when a 'panchnama' or document, signed by family members after identifying the body and agreeing to an autopsy - was to be filed by the police, Kumar's sister-in-law Madhu Bala noticed that he was showing signs of movement.

In a video that went viral, Bala can be heard saying: "He's not at all dead. How did this happen? Look, he wants to say something, he is breathing."

Moradabad's chief medical superintendent Dr Shiv Singh, said: "The emergency medical officer had seen the patient at 3 a.m and there was no heartbeat. He had examined the man multiple times. Thereafter, he was declared dead but, in the morning, a police team and his family found him alive. A probe has been ordered. Our priority is now to save his life."

Singh said it was one of those "rarest of rare cases... We can't call it negligence".

Kumar is now undergoing treatment at a health centre in Meerut where his condition has improved. According to his sister-in-law, "he is yet to regain consciousness". "We will lodge a complaint against the doctors for negligence as they almost killed Srikesh by putting him in a freezer," she added.