A man at a rally in Uttar Pradesh. (File picture)

Azamgarh, May 6: He died in 1976, kidnapped a neighbour in 1985, was arrested the same year and resurrected in 2004.

Lal Behari Mritak is now a candidate in the Uttar Pradesh elections — and his mission is justice for all those who have been declared dead by greedy relatives and unscrupulous officials.

“I am the candidate of the dead who are alive,” he says, standing at a street crossing in Chilkahar, a town in this district in the heartland’s east. “I am fighting for the legal rights of those who have been declared dead.”

But the 48-year-old wasn’t sure how voters would react. So he thought up a plan that would at least make people pause. He brought with him a huge cut-out of a skull — the symbol of death. With him are four escorts, all wearing garlands of skull made of plastic.

The moment they stop, a small crowd gathers. The ploy has worked.

“I am here to tell you the story of those who were declared dead when their relatives entered into a conspiracy to take over their land,” Lal Behari tells the crowd. “I myself was a victim of this racket.”

His story is long — no less than 28 years.

Lal Behari was declared dead in 1976 by his uncle who connived with some state officials to take over his property. He was just 17 then.

He filed complaints with police but was turned away. Then Lal Behari, who later assumed the surname Mritak — or dead — decided to abduct a neighbour.

“On July 15, 1985, I kidnapped a neighbour, 15-year-old Ratan Singh, so that the police could start a case against me and I could be shown as alive. I also distributed leaflets in the Assembly.”

By this time the crowd had begun to laugh. But his story wasn’t over yet.

On August 2, the police arrested him. He was granted bail after he told a magistrate why he abducted his neighbour.

In November 2002, the state land revenue department ordered a probe and his land was returned to him.

Two years later, he was declared alive. “My efforts bore fruit,” Lal Behari says.

Dressed in a crisp white kurta, Lal Behari has only one slogan for the May 8 poll: fight land sharks and revive the dead.

He isn’t exaggerating. The state’s revenue records reveal a series of similar cases.

Azamgarh chief judicial magistrate R.K. Tripathi, who ordered a probe into cases of land fraud, has dealt with at least 20. At least 12 revenue officials have been suspended.

In 1970, Jhulari Devi was declared dead and chased away from her family farm in Ghazipur after the death of her son. A powerful landlord stalled the case for more than 25 years. Now it has been reopened, thanks to Lal Behari. The 85-year-old widow is now a member of his party, the Mritak Sangh.

“Mritak’s case has been an eye-opener for us,” admits Ambika Chaudhary, the state’s revenue minister.

In 2003, Lal Behari was awarded the Ig Nobel prize, organised by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research and given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. The prize is presented every year by a group that includes genuine Nobel laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University.

“I now believe,” Lal Behari smiles, “it was my destiny that I became a dead man.”