wasting officials’ time.

At long last, in 1994, a local District Magistrate helped restore Bihari to legal life and his lands were returned to him. He was thirty-three years old. After over eighteen years as a dead man⁠— more than half of his life⁠— he relinquished the land to the very uncle who had originally arranged for his premature death. His uncle was so ashamed that he begged Bihari for forgiveness.

Following his own success, Lal Bihari the Living has continued his efforts to raise the dead in India’s badlands. At an official tally in 1999, the Association of the Dead had helped to resurrect roughly thirty people by virtue of having their death certificates annulled, but of those thirty only four have had their lands restored. In 2003 BihariDHAKA (Reuters Life!) - Mohammad Raju ran away from his poor family in Bangladesh’s southern Khulna district eight years ago, hoping for a better life in the capital, Dhaka.

Bangladeshi street children who have a valid source of income deposit money at the Children's Development Bank in Dhaka April 9, 2008. The bank, which is a Bangladesh-based lender that is owned by non-government organisation Aparajeyo-Bangladesh, is managed by street children. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman

Instead, his life got worse. His tiny income from selling chocolates in the sprawling parliament compound in Dhaka left him hungry and homeless.

“I used to earn up to 20 taka ($0.30) in a day which was in no way enough to survive. Sometimes policemen, who were on duty at the parliament compound, gave me their spare food. Still