"A petition was received by the Kyshtym city court, in the Chelyabinsk Region, from a resident of Kyshtym, Nikolai Puchkov, born in 1940, to annul his death certificate," the statement said.
The mix-up arose when an unidentified body was discovered in May in Kyshtym, a small town to the northwest of Chelyabinsk, and falsely presumed to be that of Puchkov. The deceased was later determined to be a homeless man bearing the same name as the plaintiff.
"What happened was that the passport service had two Nikolai Puchkovs listed, and it mistakenly identified the deceased as having been born in 1940, whereas the dead man had actually been born in 1952," the court said.
Now Puchkov, very much alive and more than a little peeved, has had to petition the court to declare him among the living. A thorough investigation determined that he resides with his wife, who confirmed his status, and has two children and four grandchildren.
"It is worth noting that these things sometimes happen when identifying people who died without a family or led a rootless existence," the court said.
