NEWS / Indian woman accused of using fake death certificate to defraud mother-in-law

An Indian woman from the City of Madurai in the State of Tamil Nadu is accused of presenting a fraudulently issued death certificate in order to claim gold and withdraw money belonging to her deceased husband.

The story began on March 9, when a man named Perumal passed away as he was in the process of getting divorced with his wife S Sundari, with whom had been married since 2014.

Sundari then allegedly submitted an application for the death certificate of Perumal’s mother C Muthumalli with the local administrative office. She reportedly presented statements confirming the fact of death from 7 different people, 2 of whom were her friends, with the others being nurses working at a local private clinic.

The local administrative office then erroneously issued a death certificate for Muthumalli, which enabled Sundari to go to the bank to demand 7 sovereigns of gold originally pledged to Perumal and to withdraw money from his account.

Luckily for Muthumalli, the bank clerk had seen the supposedly deceased woman a week prior and suspected foul play. He asked Sundari to come back the next day and then went to Muthumalli’s house and confirmed that the woman was alive and well.

“I am alive and still working under the 100-day employment scheme,” Muthumalli was quoted by the Times of India as stating. “How could they issue a death certificate in my name?”

The woman’s elder son C Ramasamy then started investigating how his own living mother could have been deemed “dead”. Having checked with the local administrative office, he was told that the phony death certificate was issued based on statements from 7 different individuals.

Ramasamy then approached a number of officials at the Madurai revenue office (tahsildar) for but could not get a resolution.

“Revenue officials issued a death certificate without even checking whether she was actually dead.” Ramasamy complained.

The family then submitted a complaint with the Madurai collectorate. Ramasamy was called in for an inquiry on Tuesday, August 18, but could not meet a single responsible officials having waited hours.

Ramasamy alleges that his sister-in-law Sundari decided to forge his mother’s death certificate after realizing that she would not consent to releasing the precious gold coins and money that belonged to her deceased son.

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