UNBELIEVABLE CASES OF REBIRTHS - II

Shanti Devi was born in Delhi on 11 December 1926. At the age of

four she told her parents that her real home where her husband also lived was in Mathura which is about  145 km from Delhi. She further shared three unique features about her husband; he was fair, wore glasses and had a big wart on his left cheek. She also said that her husband had a shop located in front of the Dwarkadhish temple in Mathura. She stated in school that she was married and had died ten days after giving birth to a child. When she was interviewed by her teacher and headmaster she used words from Mathura dialect and divulged her merchant husband's name as Kedarnath. Subsequently the headmaster located the merchant named Kedarnath in Mathura who had lost his wife, Lugdi Devi, ten days after giving birth to a son. Having got these information Kedarnath travelled to Delhi pretending to be his brother. On seeing Kedarnath Shanti Devi immediately recognised him as her husband. As she also knew several details of Kedarnath's life with his wife, Kedarnath was soon convinced that Shanti Devi was the reincarnation of his former wife Lugdi Devi.

This whole thing was brought to the attention of Mahatma Gandhi and he set up a commission to investigate the matter. The commission came to Mathura alongwith Shanti Devi on 15 November 1935. Shanti Devi recognised several family members including the grandfather of Lugdi Devi. She could further find that Kedarnath neglected to honour a number of promises he had made to Lugdi Devi on her deathbed. She returned home with her parents. The commission published it's report in 1936 convincingly stating that Shanti Devi was indeed the reincarnation of Lugdi Devi.

Shanti Devi did not marry. She told the whole story in an interview by Ian Stevenson and KS Rawat in 1950 and 1986. In these interviews she related her near death experience of Lugdi Devi. KS Rawat continued with his investigations and the last one was on 27 December 1987 just four days before the death of Shanti Devi. A Swedish writer visited her twice and published a book in 1994 and English translation of it was appeared in 1998.

(Indebted to a write up of Wikipedia)

KV George

kvgeorgein@gmail.com