India: Man returns home a day after wives cremate his 'body'

Two grieving wives who cremated the body of their husband, suspected to have died due to excessive alcohol intake, were shocked to see him return home the very next day. In a suspected case of mistaken identity, the 55-year-old Indian man's wives cremated the body of another man who was found dead in a village.

Eshwar Amarappa Hadapad who lived in a village close to the southern Indian city of Bangalore, was abandoned by his two wives because of his addiction to alcohol, The Times of India reported. On 1 May, a dead body was found in the village, which Hadapad's first wife identified as her husband. His second wife confirmed that the body was indeed that of Hadapad. A postmortem of the body confirmed that the man had died due to alcoholism. The wives subsequently took possession of the body of the deceased, believing that he was their husband and conducted his last rites.

But in a shocking twist, the man showed up at his house one after the funeral was performed. His estranged wives were shocked, but happy to see him, the newspaper reported. The women then realised that they had mistakenly cremated someone else. They immediately contacted the police to alert them about the mistake.

"A woman filed a complaint in our police station that the body found at Tekade Galli was that of her husband. But now she claims it was a wrong identification. She has filed another complaint and we're investigating," a police officer was quoted as saying by the newspaper.