In parts of Uttar Pradesh, India, one way to seize a relative's land is to bribe an official to declare them dead. The Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People exists to reverse those declarations. According to Wikipedia, in the region, "many have resorted to bribing officials to have the owner of a plot of land declared deceased and the title transferred to their ownership."
Its founder, Lal Bihari, was officially dead from 1976 to 1994. At age 20, his bank loan was denied "on the grounds that he was officially dead" — his uncle had paid a government official 300 rupees to inherit Bihari's one-acre holding. To reverse the ruling, Bihari "changed his name to Lal Bihari Mritak" (mritak is Hindi for "dead"), had his wife apply for a widow's pension, staged a mock funeral, and ran for office against Rajiv Gandhi. He was declared alive in 1994, by which point he had gathered "thousands of 'dead' citizens across Uttar Pradesh." He won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003.
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