Family Left In Shock As Woman Believed To Have Died From COVID Returns Home Weeks After Cremation

Muktyala Girijamma

The relatives of a woman who was declared dead from the ravaging coronavirus were left in shock after she arrived home two weeks after her funeral.

Muktyala Girijamma’s family were told on May 15 that she had died of coronavirus, but social distancing policies meant they could only see the body from a distance.

It remained tightly wrapped in plastic right up until the point of cremation, the Daily Star reports.

The 60-year-old’s nephew Nagu told reporters that when they tried to visit her at Vijayawada Government General Hospital in India they were told that she had died.

He said: “The duty doctor on that day failed to inform my uncle that she was shifted to another ward and told him that she succumbed to Covid.

“Believing it, we went to the mortuary to find her body where we were given the body of another woman. Since we could not verify the body before taking it as it was packed, we took the body home and performed the last rites.”

The grieving family were given the body for cremation. But now, says Nagu, “we do not know whom we have cremated”.

Muktyala returned to the village of Christianpet in Jaggaiahpet Mandal of Krishna district on Wednesday shortly before the family members were to perform the Shraddha ceremony – a final send-off for a departed relative.

While the hospital had offered her 3,000 Rupees (about £29) for transport home she had chosen to walk most of the way – and her first words to stunned relatives were a complaint that no one had come to collect her.

Sadly, Muktyala’s miracle return is bittersweet – her 36-year-old son Ramesh, who had been admitted to hospital suffering from Covid on the same day as her died of the infection on May 23.

According to the latest government figures, there have been 28,441,986 coronavirus cases conformed in India, and some 337,989 have lost their lives as a result.