Hospital blunder: Family cremate woman alive

Rachna Sisodia, 21, suffered a lung infection and was taken to hospital in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state.

She was declared dead by the hospital on February 25 so her husband, Devesh Chaudhary, took her body and drove it with friends to a funeral pyre.

Several hours later they started the cremation process but then somebody noticed that she was alive and so pulled her from the fire.

She showed no signs of life thereafter but a post-mortem examination showed charred particles in her windpipe and lungs which would not have been present if she had not been
breathing.

Two doctors working together said the cause of death was not lung infection but in fact ‘shock caused by being burnt alive’.

Rajesh Pandey, a senior police superintendent, told local media of the doctors’ verdict.

A police spokesman added: ‘This happens when someone is burnt alive. The particles go inside with the breath. If a person is dead, such particles cannot reach the lungs and the windpipe.

‘So, the doctors concluded that the woman was burnt alive on the pyre.’

However, the Rachna’s uncle Kailash Singh accused her husband Devesh and 11 relatives of raping and killing her. He said that she had been reported missing on December 13.

Police are taking the accusations seriously but all the men have disappeared, they say.

However, the doctors at Sharda maintain that Rachna did in fact die at their hospital and post-mortem doctor Pankaj Mishra says he cannot be sure that the body he examined was that of Rachna, due to the extent of the burns on it.

Devesh told local media, from an unknown location, that his in-laws were trying to frame him and his relatives in a bid to acquire his property.

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2017/03/02/family-cremate-woman-alive-when-hospital-wrongly-declares-her-dead-6484078/#mv-b