A Bihar woman presumed dead for 12 years was found alive in Jharkhand, reopening a murder case that sent her husband to jail over allegations he killed her.
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Shakuntala Devi was presumed dead after a body found in Bihar was identified as hers in 2014.
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Her husband and relatives faced murder allegations and spent years dealing with the case.
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She was later found alive in Jharkhand, reportedly living under another name.
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Police reopened investigations into the original case and the unidentified body.
A woman from Bihar, India, who was presumed dead for 12 years after a body recovered in 2014 was identified as hers, has been found alive in Jharkhand — in a shocking twist that has reopened a murder case that sent her husband and his family members to jail.
The woman, identified in reports as Shakuntala Devi, disappeared from her home in Rohtas district, Bihar, in 2014. At the time, her family alleged that she had been facing harassment from her in-laws over dowry-related issues before she went missing.
After her disappearance, an unidentified woman’s body was recovered from a canal in Rohtas district. Shakuntala’s brother reportedly identified the body as that of his sister, leading to the registration of a murder case against her husband, Arun Mehta, and members of his family.
The case resulted in Arun Mehta and some of his relatives being arrested and spending years dealing with the murder allegations. Reports said the family faced serious financial hardship during the legal battle, including selling ancestral property.
For more than a decade, Shakuntala was believed to have been killed.
However, the case took an unexpected turn when she was found alive in Jharkhand’s Garhwa district, where she had reportedly been living under another name, Kanti Devi, with another man.
According to reports, her discovery came after members of her husband’s family spotted her and alerted authorities. Police later traced her and confirmed her identity, leading to a fresh investigation into the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and the events that followed.
The discovery has raised questions about the body that was identified as Shakuntala’s in 2014 and how the identification was made. Authorities are now investigating the original case, including the circumstances surrounding the unidentified body recovered years ago.
Following her reappearance, reports said a new case was registered against Shakuntala over allegations including fraud and criminal conspiracy, as investigators look into whether there was any deception involved in the events that led to the original murder case.
The case has left many questions unanswered: who was the woman whose body was found in 2014, how was she identified as Shakuntala, and what happened during the 12 years she was believed to be dead?
For Arun Mehta and his family, the discovery has transformed a case they had been fighting for years into a new legal battle, while investigators continue to piece together what happened.
