A family cremated their “dead son” only to receive a shock call weeks later revealing he was alive and sitting in jail.
Ravi Kumar, 35, disappeared from his home in India, prompting his worried family to report him missing to police.
Officers later showed relatives photographs of a badly decomposed body discovered in a wetland area.
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Despite the corpse being difficult to recognise, Ravi’s family believed they could identify him from what he was wearing.
His brother Amandeep said: “Though the face was disfigured, we identified him by his clothes.”
The devastated family cremated the body on 13 August and held a memorial service in Kapurthala, Punjab, two days later.
Ravi had been missing since 5 August.
But on 2 September, they received an astonishing phone call from Kapurthala Central Jail.
Staff told them Ravi was alive and had been locked up there since the very day he disappeared.
Amandeep said: “We were shocked and relieved at the same time.”
Ravi later told his family he had been picked up by police for loitering on 5 August and transferred to the jail that evening.
A senior officer said he had been arrested for bailable offences.
Jail staff eventually contacted his family because nobody had come forward to post bail.
Relatives from Kadupur village rushed to visit the prison the following day and confirmed the inmate was indeed Ravi.
But his remarkable reappearance has left police wondering whose body the family cremated.
Officers are now desperately trying to identify the remains.
Police spokesperson DSP Sheetal Singh said: “We now have an unidentified corpse with no matching missing persons report and no clear leads.
“DNA testing isn’t viable at this stage, so we are reviewing technical evidence, including cell tower dump data from the Kanjhli wetland, to establish the deceased’s identity.”
He added that Ravi’s family would be summoned for questioning.
The investigation continues.
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