Still alive, man gets BMC death certificate

MUMBAI: The BMC has issued a death certificate to a man who is alive. Churchgate resident Arjundas Thakur, to his surprise, found that he had been "killed'' by the BMC during a court case recently.
Thakur had sold his Andheri (E) property to a developer but another person filed a case in the high court, claiming that he owned the property. The petitioner told the court he bought the property from Thakur who had died in 2004.He also produced a death certificate and submitted it as evidence in court.
Thakur came to know about it and lodged a complaint with the BMC, which blamed it on a computer error. "We received a complaint and found out that the man was alive. The certificate was issued erroneously. We are finding out if the error was manual or made while issuing the certificate online,'' civic commissioner Jairaj Phatak said.
An official from the IT department said such goof-ups never happened before. "It does not look like a fault of the online services. It's a human error,'' he said.
Earlier, consumer activist Jehangir Gai, who had applied for his mother's death certificate, got a packet full of birth and death certificates of people from across the city. Thakur's case is still in court.
sharad.vyas@timesgroup.com