An Indian man was declared dead following a motorcycle accident and placed in a morgue freezer – but shocked his family when they discovered that he was still breathing the next day.
Srikesh Kumar, 45, was in critical condition after he was struck by the motorcycle in Moradabad, east of the capital New Delhi, on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
He was declared dead on arrival at a private medical facility and was then taken to a government hospital.
“The emergency medical officer examined him. He did not find any signs of life and hence declared him dead,” Rajendra Kumar, the hospital’s medical superintendent, told the news agency on Sunday.
The body was then placed inside the freezer until his relatives arrived six hours later.
“When a police team and his family came over to initiate the paperwork for the autopsy, he was found alive,” Kumar said.
“This is nothing short of a miracle,” he said, adding that the man remained comatose after the shocking discovery.
Kumar’s sister-in-law Madhu Bala noticed that he was still moving, The US Sun reported.
“He’s not at all dead. How did this happen? Look, he wants to say something, he is breathing,” Bala said in video that has gone viral.
“We will lodge a complaint against the doctors for negligence as they almost killed Srikesh by putting him in a freezer,” she told reporters.
Hospital chief 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 added.
He said the incident was the “rarest of rare cases … We can’t call it negligence.”