An Indian man who had wrongfully been pronounced dead by the government turned to crime as a desperate way of proving that he was very much alive.

Baburam Bhil a 40-year-old man from Rajasthan’s Mithora village, had long been trying to convince authorities that he was still alive after they issued a death certificate in his name. He tried to correct the error, appealing to his village elders and state authorities, but to no avail, so he decided to go for a more extreme option. Afraid that all his properties would be confiscated by the government after his “death”, Baburam came to the conclusion that becoming a serious criminal was the best way of attracting attention to his problem. On July 19, he grabbed a knife and a petrol bottle and began terrorizing a local school.