LUCKNOW, Nov 25: A man who met with a road accident was mistakenly declared dead by doctors when he was taken to a hospital in Moradabad in UP last week. He was shifted to a Government hospital for post-mortem examination and kept in the morgue freezer pending identification. His relatives who came to know of the accident arrived at the hospital in the morning looking for their loved one and one among them found Srikesh Kumar was breathing when taken out of the freezer.

According to reports, 45-year-old Kumar, an electrician, was hit by a motorbike in Moradabad on November 18 and taken to the hospital in a critical condition. Doctors declared him dead and he was moved to the Government hospital morgue.

"The emergency medical officer had seen the patient at around 3 am and there was no heartbeat. He told me he had examined the man multiple times," Rajendra Kumar, the hospital's medical superintendent, told AFP. What kept him alive in the freezer could have been the frequent power failures.

Thereafter, Kumar was taken to another hospital for treatment but he continued to be in coma and died of a blood clot in the brain five days later on Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, investigation is on to find out how the patient was declared dead even as he was alive.

A 20-year-old woman in Michigan faced a similar situation last year. She was declared dead and taken to a funeral home where staff later found her alive. It was explained away as a case of Lazarus syndrome – a delayed return of spontaneous circulation after CPR, according to a report in USA Today.