He’s dead, damn it!

Dead Indian guru frozen by devotees

Ashutosh Maharaj’s body has been kept in a freezer for nearly six weeks

Devotees of a dead guru in India have told the BBC they put his body in a freezer to preserve him as they believe he will return to life to lead them.

Ashutosh Maharaj was declared dead by authorities in Punjab on 29 January after a suspected heart attack.

But, confident that he was merely in a state of deep meditation, his followers froze his corpse.

He led the Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan (Divine Light Awakening Mission) which claims more than 30 million followers.

“He is not dead. Medical science does not understand things like yogic science. We will wait and watch. We are confident that he will come back,” his spokesman Swami Vishalanand told the BBC.

He said that although doctors had declared Maharaj “clinically dead”, he was actually alive and in a state of samadhi, which is the highest plane of meditation.

The guru is thought to have been in his seventies.