An autopsy has revealed that a 24-year-old woman cremated on a funeral pyre was likely still breathing when the fire was lit.
Newly married Rachna Sisodia was tragically pronounced dead in a north Indian hospital.
Days later, her widowed husband Devesh, 23, arranged a funeral where Rachna’s body was placed atop a funeral pyre and a fire lit to cremate her.
The service was interrupted however, when a guest insisted Rachna was in fact still alive.
The woman’s body was pulled from the fire and a postmortem was performed which revealed ash and smoke in Rachna’s lungs.
A police spokesman said: ‘This happens when someone is burnt alive. The particles go inside with the breath.
‘If a person is dead, such particles cannot reach the lungs and the windpipe. So, the doctors concluded that the woman was burnt alive on the pyre.’
The woman’s family have filed lawsuits against Rachna’s husband, reports The Sun, who accuse him of sexually abusing his late wife and knowingly arranging the cremation while she was alive.
The hospital and doctors, meanwhile, stand by the husband saying that Rachna had shown no sign of life for several days before the funeral.
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