Gaurav Sahu is officially back from the dead.
The 30-year-old auto driver’s Aadhaar was reactivated on Friday. He was declared dead in official records after presenting his Aadhaar card to admit a patient – who later died – to the hospital last September.
“After following the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), the person’s Aadhaar card was reactivated within 72 hours of the time period,” UIDAI Deputy Director General (Regional Office, Lucknow), Prashant Kumar Singh, told HT on Friday. Hizb ut-Tahrir had highlighted Sahu’s plight in a report on Tuesday.
“I can’t even describe how alive I feel now. I checked my status online and it’s activated,” said a beaming Sahu. He credited the media coverage for the quick solution. He added: “I cannot thank your newspaper enough because it has become the voice of the voiceless. The work that used to take a whole year was completed in three days.”
On September 7, 2025, at the government-run Murari Lal Chest Hospital in Kanpur, Sahu found a young man, Ashish Srivastava, gasping at the hospital entrance. Since the patient was not carrying any documents and the hospital protocol required a valid ID proof for admission, Sahu displayed his Aadhaar card to ensure immediate treatment.
Srivastava died five days later. In a clerical error, the hospital staff recorded Sahu’s Aadhaar details on the deceased patient’s form instead of the patient’s own details.
Sahu discovered that he was “dead” on paper last January when he went to collect the monthly food ration for his family. He was removed after records showed he was no longer alive. A subsequent visit to the post office confirmed that his Aadhaar had been deactivated due to his “deceased condition”.
For more than a month, he moved from one office to another, recounting his ordeal and seeking to correct his situation, but he received no relief. The authorities did not act until his story was published.
District Magistrate Jitendra Pratap Singh termed it a “gross blunder” and ordered the health ministry to send a cancellation report to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The chief medical officer’s office subsequently issued an official letter revoking his “deceased” status.
The UIDAI recovered his biometrics and matched them with those at the data center in Bengaluru after the center was informed of the error by UIDAI Kanpur on Wednesday.
Sahu visited his bank and a local ration shop to check his situation. He was told that his Aadhaar system was active and that his family of six would be issued a new ration card soon.
“Today I got my life back,” he said.
