A 54-year-old man named Ningappa from Yadgir, who was presumed dead, woke up and said he was hungry. The situation soon turned chaotic when Ningappa’s relatives panicked and ran away, believing that he was a ghost.
As bizarre as it sounds, the series of events were due to misguided information provided by an ambulance paramedic that Ningappa was dead.
The incident occurred on Monday in Yadigir district’s Madalinganala village located in Surapura taluk.
According to Ningappa, he experienced severe chest pain on the night of February 16. “The pain got worse and my family members took me to the government hospital in Vijayapura. The doctors there asked my family to take me to a private hospital,” Ningappa said.
He was then taken to Yashoda Hospital in Yadgir, where the doctors informed his family members that his chances of survival were slim.
“My father became unconscious and the doctors kept him in the ICU for observation. Even after three days, he did not wake up. The doctors said that he would be alive for one or two hours at the most. We decided to bring him back to Madalinganala. On the way, the paramedic in the ambulance told us that he died,” said Ningappa’s son Parashurama.
Ningappa’s family quickly informed all their relatives and preparations were being made for his last rites.
“At around midnight on Monday, when all our relatives had gathered, he woke up all of a sudden and said he was hungry. We tried to feed him porridge but he asked for fruit juice. Many of our relatives then thought he was a ghost and ran away,” Parashurama added
On February 19, a similar incident was reported Dharwad’s Mannagundi village, where a 17-year-old boy named Kumar Marewad woke up during his funeral procession.
Kumar had been bitten by a stray dog a month ago and had high fever. He was taken to the hospital where the doctors had put him on a ventilator. As the infection spread, the family had decided to discontinue medical treatment. The boy’s family members presumed that Kumar died when there was no body movement.