Lal Bihari Biography 
Lal Bihari is an Indian farmer and activist, who gained media attention for being officially dead between 1975 and 1994, while he was alive. He fought long 19 years with Indian bureaucracy to prove that he was indeed alive. Sarcastically he added ‘Mritak’ tag to his name, which literally means ‘dead or deceased’ and used it during the period 1975-1994, and hence he is also known by the name Lal Bihari Mritak. He also founded Mritak Sangh, the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People. This pressure group based in Azamgarh seeks to reclaim the legal rights of those falsely listed as dead by UP government. Bihari was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Award in 2003, a parody of Nobel Prize given to different fields, for the best achievements of "first make people laugh, and then make them think".
Lal Bihari was born in Amilo, Azamgarh district in 1955. Everything was going normal. But events took a new turn when Bihari visited the revenue office at Azamgarh district headquarters to get a proof of his identity. He was to apply for a bank loan. He was extremely shocked to find that as per records, he is dead officially. He came to know that it was done by his uncle who forged documents and bribed an official to register him as dead, to get the ownership of Bihari's ancestral land at Khalilabad. When he later found that it’s not his case only, and that at least 100 persons face the similar situation, he decided to challenge the law and fight for the right of all, including himself. He waged a lively posthumous campaign against bureaucratic inertia and greedy relatives.
He formed Mritak Sangh, Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People in Azamgarh, where he was declared dead. Slowly more people joined this organization, and currently the association has over 20,000 members from all over India. By 2004, the organization managed to declare four of them alive. During his ‘official dead’ years, he arranged many things sarcastically, such as arranging his own funeral and also demanding widow pension for his wife. He also signed his letters "late Lal Bihari". Noted filmmaker Satish Kaushak planned to do a movie based on his life, and actor Anil Kapoor was to play his role. But the movie is yet to kick off.
Published: September 29, 2018
Updated: September 29, 2018
