In Agra, a 70-year-old man was seen putting up the wooden sign “Main Zinda Hun (I am alive).” According to Dinanath Yadav, the Agra resident, he was declared dead by the employees at the office of Agra’s Chief Development Officer (CDO).
Carrying the wooden placard around his neck, Yadav appeared before the Agra District Magistrate office on Sunday, claiming he was “maliciously” declared dead by the state government employees in March this year, India Today reported.
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Surprised at his claim, the District Magistrate pursued the documents produced by Yadav and issued instructions to the CDO’s staff to ascertain how he was pronounced dead.Speaking to India Today, Dinanath Yadav said that he is in perfect health, goes to his farms every day, and has even been drawing an old-age pension for the past two years.
However, his pension stopped in March this year and he was not given a satisfactory answer when he contacted the village Secretary, he said.According to Yadav, he went to the CDO office where he learned that a staffer had shown him as dead in the government records, which not only caused his pension to stop but could also lead to several legal issues for him in the future.
He said that he had tried to contact the District Magistrate several times in the past eight months. He decided to walk into the DM’s office with a placard hanging from his neck that read “Main Zinda Hoon”.
Yadav said that the District Magistrate immediately called up the village Panchayat Secretary in Etmadpur and instructed him to file a full report, resolving his problem.
When asked if he was aware of the issue, Block Development Officer (BDO) Anirudh Singh said that he did come across this case but since he was on leave, he was unable to comment on it.
Social activist Vijay Upadhyay pointed out that this is not a solitary case, and there were hundreds of such men in Uttar Pradesh, who have been pronounced dead on government records and are struggling to prove that they are alive.
