New York Man Sues the City after He Was Mistakenly Declared Dead

A man from Queens, Shirajul Khan, who was declared deceased by the Brooklyn hospital, is suing the city. Khan was declared dead at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak.

A New York native, Shirajul Khan, sued the city after he was mistakenly declared dead. In April 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Khan received the news that he was dead.

The Kings County Hospital in the city reported him deceased, and his insurances ended, and he stopped getting his social security payments.

Khan’s lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court proved that he was not dead and was never a patient at the East Flatbush hospital.

The actual man who died on April 21, 2020, had the same identity as him and was also Shirajul Khan. The real Khan explained how being presumed dead affected him.

"This has caused me great pain and suffering. The strain that this put on my family and me has provoked the relationship with my wife to deteriorate," Khan wrote in his court papers, adding, "I was clearly not deceased."

When contacted by the Daily News recently, Khan and his wife declined to speak to the news outlet and revealed their lawyer advised them not to talk to the media.

In April this year, a man was wrongly declared dead twice in India. Gorelal Kori, 58, a suspected COVID-19 patient, was admitted to the district’s Atal Bihari Medical College Hospital in a critical condition on April 12 after complaining about difficulty in breathing.

The following day, a nurse informed the family Kori had died. His son Kailash revealed he and the rest of the family rushed inside his father’s ward and found him alive.

Later, the loved ones were told Kori would undergo surgery. However, the very same day, they were told his father died during the procedure and refused to hand over his body, claiming he died from the virus.

They then went to a crematorium to arrange his cremation and received a call from the hospital saying that he was still alive and was being put on a ventilator.

Last month, a State-run RK Hospital had declared the body of a man as identified, and later Omkar Lal Gadulia’s relatives wrongly took possession of that body.

However, the 40-year-old presumed dead male showed up to the surprise of his family a week after the funeral after mistakenly identifying a decomposed corpse as his body. The hospital wrongly declared the body of a man Goverdhan Prajapat who was later identified as Gadulia.

In August 2014, a chief official put six first responders on leave after a man was mistakenly declared dead. Fire Chief Rick White placed all three responders, including an EMT, a medic, and an EMS district chief, on administration leave.

The paramedics pronounced a gunshot victim dead and left the scene, but it turns out the victim was still responsive. The 30-year-old man had shot himself in the head.