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'Dead' man awakens before autopsy, shocks doctors by asking for glass of water

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Mange Ram, 19, lost consciousness in the stampede that killed 150 people and was triggered by rumors of a landslide leading to a Hindu temple devoted to the goddess Naina Devi.

Ram awoke in the hospital morgue Sunday in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

"When I woke up, I was in the middle of a row of bodies waiting for post mortem," he told the Times. "My throat was parched and I asked for water. Towering over me the doctors and nursing staff at Anandpur Sahib Civil Hospital looked dazed. They must have been surprised to see a dead man come alive like that."

Sat Pal Aggarwal, a doctor on the pilgrimage, said little was done to see if victims of the stampede were still alive.

"People were dumped quite haphazardly into trucks without following any procedure or checking if they were alive," he told the Times.

Despite the huge loss of life, the pilgrimage continued only hours after the corpses had been cleared, according to the newspaper.
joshzimmerman

74 responses // 'Dead' man awakens before autopsy, shocks doctors by asking for glass of water

  • Beware of zombies!!!!!
    regjoeschmo
  • Who spilled the worstechire (sp?) sauce on him?
    good_stuff
  • Two awful comments so far.

    No remarks about the blatant disregard for life?

    I am constantly disappointed by most of the other users on current.

    It seems like people just leave quick little comments to see if they will make it on air.
    HolyCity2012
    1 response to this
  • id piss my pants if i was one of the docters.
    KrystalleM
  • or just being sarcastic..........
    regjoeschmo
  • Well, at least they hadn't started yet. That would be tragic.

    I can't believe things like this slip through. My niece had pneumonia for three months and despite constant doctor visits and check-ins, no one thought to do a chest x-ray until a week ago.

    Public health...sigh.
    mario_a
  • scary... what about family members, where were they?
    elegua
  • thats amazing.. although he was probably just knocked into a slight coma...... and when you 150 people.. that you know most are going to be dead anyway... i doubt they would do the first "checks"... they were gonna go to the hospitals (or the morgue) anyway... they would have checked them there....
    kewal91
    2 responses to this
  • Whoa. I wonder how many they autopsied that were still "alive"?
    J_Jammer
    4 responses to this
  • Braaaaains!
    jennyschu
  • Wow what a story.
    powerup
  • I understand they were probably trying to clear the road as quickly as possible, but...NO checks at all? Come on guys, how long does it take to feel for a pulse?
    Allsunday
    1 response to this
  • Holy crap, that's crazy
    peenkeefeenger
  • Are you kiiddddinngg me. Dont you still breath when your knocked unconsious or in a coma. I mean cmmoonnn
    Jakkob
  • Hey, let's all go out and get matching pilgrim tattoos!
    rightbrain
  • http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Man_faints_dur...
    If I woke up after being left for dead, I'd ask for a beer.

    Seriously though, here's a link to a longer article from the Times of India.
    marcozarco
  • Man he is so lucky, just a little bit more time unconscious and they would really have killed this comatose man. Yikes!
    marpunk
  • In all fairness, if you were handling what you thought were scores of dead bodies, you'd want the job to be over as soon as possible, wouldn't you? It's hardly the fault of the lower-level workers if they assume one comatose, barely alive body is like the hundred+ corpses around it.
    4free
    2 responses to this
  • I have to agree with those whom are taken aback by the crude and ill-humored comments left by others in response to this clip. I understand finding humor in what can be daunting news, but it seems immature, non-compassionate and, frankly, unintelligent that people are actually taking the time to post irrelevant comments about zombies, etc., in response to a story like this one.

    I don't know about the rest of you but this story seems to reveal some rather non-humanitarian efforts to... clean up ( for lack of a better term)... a really ugly mess; and I think the fact that this guy was being prepared for postmortem when he was in fact still alive should be questioned and challenged.

    Can we deny that if the scene had occurred in the middle of Manhattan and not on a hilltop in a developing country, our reactions may have been quite drastically different?
    ladybee
  • Wow, I'm just glad he woke up in time before the autopsy. But how could they not check properly to see if any of the people were still alive?
    purplefox
  • This is frightening! It reminds me of a Stephen King story called "Autopsy Room Four"...

    If someone is unconscious and you start to autopsy them, will they show signs of life before it's too late?
    DeliaTheArtist
  • this is why i work in medicine, the human existence amazes me in every form
    diode
  • I hope the rumor initiator gets murder 1.
    BillionJawingNeurons
  • That's crazy! How would you like to wake up with a bunch of dead bodies around you only to find that they had declared you dead? I can't believe that they didn't even bother checking if any other people in the accident were still alive. That's inhumane!
    advertisinggal
  • Whoever pronounced death must not have been a very good examiner.
    jubal
  • wow so they were just throwing anyone that looked dead in the back of a truck with dead bodies! real efficient
    nata0204
  • "Woops, our bad."
    BandDrumMajor
  • i love how nonchalant he is about the whole situation, like he wakes up in the morgue every sunday after herding some dangerous livestock.
    cityaffinity
  • Yeah the raising and lowering of the chest cause by BREATHING might signal that the person is still alive!
    sk84life
  • so sad, other lives could have possibly been saved had officials been more careful.
    camisalami
  • Imagine if she'd woke up after being stuck into the dead person holding bay. This is awesome.
    JudahEvan
  • Too bad he didn't time have time to think it through when he first came to. He could've had some serious fun.
    eldamon
  • Maybe I'm just a very curious cat but I would've asked this man what he experienced other than cotton mouth.
    Some N.D.E. cases are astonishing.
    VegaNerDiva
  • I have a rare condition that causes me to paralyze. One of the triggers is adrenaline rushes (stampede would definitely count).

    I wish I didn't remember the number of times I have been mistaken for being dead. I am fully conscious but completely non-responsive.

    I would be freaked to find myself in a morgue. Bad enough when I find my carcass dragged to the hospital.
    beck7422
  • It's from fox and the guy was unconscious, not dead. Let's move on.
    anglcazn
    6 responses to this
  • Can you imagine being the mortician and have to go right back to cutting up their decided bodies. You finally get used to doing your job and all of a sudden, one starts talking. I don't know how you would recover from that. Scaring.
    Stevox
  • Can you imagine the look on the guys' faces?! That's crazy, imagine if they had gone further into the autopsy.
    rwylie
  • Well, this is why I'll be incinerated! I will never go 6 feet under!
    petarro
    2 responses to this
  • A modern day Lazaruz! Good thing thing he awoke be he met the scalpel!
    HeroMAY
  • I believe the procedure before begining an autopsy is to break the spinal cord so if you weren't dead before, you would be dead after that. Maybe a more reformed method of dealing with excessive bodies will be put into place after this incident
    Bood
  • As for not checking to see if they were DEAD or not...

    I thought America's public health was terrible. But this is horrid. What if that were some 8-year-old boy, rather than a 19-year-old man? What if that 8-year-old had been alive? Could he have survived being thrown into a truck, hauled away? He could have been suffocated, crushed to death, who knows.

    We need an absolute, global revamp of health care.
    kiwipops_
  • I think the term "mildly retarded people" comes to mind.