Punjab family cremates ‘son’, finds him alive in jail 15 days later

A family in Punjab’s Kapurthala went through the extraordinary ordeal of mourning and cremating a man they believed was their missing son, only to discover about 15 days later that he was alive — and lodged in the Kapurthala Central Jail.

Ravi Kumar, a resident of Kadupur village, had left home on August 5 and did not return. His father and brother initially searched for him themselves before approaching the Kapurthala City Police Station on August 11 and lodging a missing person report. Around the same period, police had recovered the decomposed body of an unidentified young man near Kanjli. The family was shown photographs of the body and subsequently identified it as Ravi. After statements of the relatives were recorded, the body was handed over to them.

Believing that Ravi was dead, the family cremated the body on August 13 and subsequently performed the bhog ceremony on August 15.

Call changes everything

The case took a startling turn on September 2 when the family received a telephone call from an employee of the Kapurthala Central Jail informing them that a man named Ravi Kumar was lodged there.

Initially unable to believe what they had been told, the family went to the jail the following day to verify the information. There, they found Ravi alive.

According to the family, Ravi told them that he had been apprehended by Jalandhar Police on August 6 in a vagrancy-related case and subsequently sent to jail. Police have confirmed that he had been taken into custody on August 6, a day after he left home. The timeline has raised questions over how the body recovered near Kanjli came to be identified as Ravi when he was already in police custody.

Whose body was cremated?

While the family’s grief has turned to relief, the discovery has created another mystery — the identity of the person whose body was cremated as Ravi Kumar.

The episode has also raised questions over the identification process and whether sufficient verification was carried out before the unidentified body was released to the family.

DSP Sheetal Singh said a preliminary inquiry had found that Ravi had been lodged in jail on several previous occasions and confirmed that he was apprehended by Jalandhar Police on August 6. He said several aspects of the case appeared suspicious and would be investigated.

Police will now have to establish the identity of the deceased man and reconstruct the circumstances in which his body was mistaken for Ravi’s. Investigators are also expected to examine police and jail records and the process followed before the body was handed over.

For Ravi’s family, however, a phone call from jail transformed what they believed was an irreversible tragedy. Fifteen days after cremating a man they thought was their son, they discovered Ravi had been alive all along.