Bihar Woman Declared Dead in 2014 Found Alive in Jharkhand

A murder case that sent a Bihar family to jail and cost them ancestral land has unravelled more than a decade later, after the woman presumed dead was found alive in neighbouring Jharkhand.

Shakuntala Devi, married to Arun Mehta in 2002, left her marital home in Rohtas district in 2014 without informing anyone, according to the family's counsel, advocate Shahnawaz Ahmed. Her in-laws searched for her but could not trace her, and on August 20 that year her brother lodged a missing-person complaint.

The initial case invoked Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 3 and 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, following allegations that Shakuntala had been harassed over dowry demands.

Two days after the complaint, a woman's body was recovered from a canal near Khanda village under Dehri Muffasil police station. Shakuntala's brother and a local chowkidar identified the remains as hers. A post-mortem was conducted and the report placed before a court, while murder provisions were added on the strength of the brother's statement.

Arun Mehta, his father Dilip Mehta and his brother Govind Kumar were among those arrested. Arun spent time in jail before securing bail, even as proceedings continued.

The family claims the matter was eventually settled through a compromise, with Shakuntala's relatives seeking Rs 8 lakh. To raise the sum, Dilip Mehta's roughly three-and-a-half-kattha parcel of ancestral land was sold, and the case was closed.

For years afterwards, the episode rested on a single assumption: that Shakuntala was dead. That assumption collapsed about two months ago, when Dilip Mehta received information that his daughter-in-law had been seen in a Jharkhand village. He and others travelled there and recognised her, but were too frightened to approach her at the time, Ahmed said.

The family then approached Rohtas Superintendent of Police Raj, who ordered an inquiry. Police traced the woman to Labhari village in Garhwa district, under Kandi police station, where she had been living as Kanti Devi with a man identified as Rattu Singh. She was brought back to Rohtas and produced before a court in Sasaram.

Investigators have now reopened the case from scratch. "We are trying to establish whose body was recovered earlier and how it came to be identified as Shakuntala's," an officer said, adding that appropriate legal action would follow against anyone found culpable.

Separately, police have initiated proceedings against Shakuntala, alleging that she falsely implicated her in-laws and was involved in fraud and criminal conspiracy.

Two questions remain unanswered: why her brother identified the body as his sister's, and to whom the remains mistaken for hers actually belonged.