When actor Pankaj Tripathi brought the character of a man declared dead alive on screen in Kaagaz (2021), audiences laughed, cried, and shook their heads at the absurdity of it all. Behind the reel story lay the real ordeal of Lal Bihari 'Mritak', a farmer from Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh, who spent 18 years fighting to prove that he wasn't dead.
On July 30, 1976, Lal Bihari "died" in government records. He didn't know this until he applied for a bank loan to start a handloom business. When he approached his village officials for property documents, he was told his name had been struck off and his land transferred to his uncle. For the state, he was dead.
For Lal Bihari, that was the beginning of a struggle to reclaim his existence.
Living As The 'Dead'
The injustice was not a clerical error. His uncle had fraudulently declared him dead to grab his land. Overnight, Lal Bihari was erased from the books of the living.
What followed was an 18-year Kafkaesque battle to reclaim his life. In desperation, he turned to bizarre, attention-grabbing tactics. He contested elections against political heavyweights like Rajiv Gandhi and VP Singh, filing his papers as a "Mritak" (dead).
He once kidnapped his nephew, hoping the resulting police records would prove he was alive.
He even applied for a widow's pension in his wife's name, to mock the bureaucracy that had rendered him dead.
In 1989, he barged into the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, shouting "Mujhe zinda karo," (Make me alive) before being dragged out. His plight caught the attention of former UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Finally, on June 30, 1994, revenue records restored his status as a living person. Lal Bihari was alive again, at least on paper.
Lal Bihari's struggle continued in the courts. On January 15, 2018, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court took up his petition seeking Rs 25 crore in compensation for the 18 prime years he lived as "dead."
In January 2024, Lal Bihari 'Mritak' remarried his wife, Karmi Devi, in their village.
The Mritak Sangh, Association Of The "Living Dead"
Lal Bihari's fight was not unique. Across India, thousands of poor villagers had been declared dead in land-grab scams. Realising this, he founded the Mritak Sangh (Association of the Living Dead), a body that has since claimed over 21,000 members in UP alone.
Lal Bihari's tale eventually reached the cinema. Actor and director Satish Kaushik adapted his story into the film Kaagaz, bringing his battle to a wider audience. Satish Kaushik also considered making a biopic titled Main Zinda Hoon.
