You’ve probably seen people hiding in the bushes and wearing all kinds of silly disguises in order to go outside without being stopped by police, but now you can add faking death to the list of things people have resorted to in order to circumvent the coronavirus lockdown.

Just like Italy, India imposed nationwide lockdown from last Wednesday to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which left many citizens stranded hundreds of kilometers away from home, with no way to return. That was the case of Hakim Din, a 70-year-old villager from Poonch, in India’s disputed Kashmir region. He was being treated for a minor head injury at a hospital in Jammu, a few hundred kilometers away from home, when the lockdown was enforced, and he started looking for ways to get back. When an ambulance driver suggested that he play dead in order to get past the checkpoints, he jumped at the opportunity.

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The Indian city of Bangalore is home to one of the most lavish, over-the-top luxury mansions in the world – a replica of the White House built atop a skyscraper.

Vijay Mallya, the chairman of United Breweries Group, has always been one of India’s most flamboyant tycoons, but in 2010, when he announced plans to have a mansion modelled after the White House built atop a luxury skyscraper in Bangalore, people thought it was too much, even for him. He didn’t let that deter him from building his dream home, and by 2016, his mansion atop Kingfisher Tower in the heart of Bangalore City was taking shape. Unfortunately, by that time his financial woes were the talk of India, and it wasn’t long before he fled the country for the UK, leaving his dream home unfinished.

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An Indian man was recently arrested after bringing home a human hand that he had allegedly taken from a crematorium and asking his wife to cook it for dinner.

The disturbing episode unfolded last week in Tikkopur village, India’s Uttar Pradesh and sent shock waves through the entire area. The accused, known only as 32-year-old man named Sanjay, reportedly brought home a human hand and casually handed (pun intended) it to his wife to cook for dinner. The horrified woman reportedly lost consciousness and fell to the ground, only to wake up to an even more macabre sight – her husband getting ready to cook the human appendage himself. All she could do was run out of the house, lock her husband inside and call the police.

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Indian doctors recently reported the curious case of a young woman who underwent a double hand transplant almost three years ago and whose hands have changed color to match her skin tone.

21-year-old Shreya Siddanagowder lost both her hands in a freak road accident in 2016, when travelling from her hometown in Pune to her college in Karnataka. Doctors had no choice but to amputate both her hand and forearms, and she needed about a year to recover. As soon as she did, she visited the Amrita Institute to register for a double hand transplant, and doctors there miraculously managed to find a donor for her on that same day, August 9, 2017. There were almost 200 other people on the waiting list, some from foreign countries like Afghanistan or Bangladesh, but she was lucky enough to be compatible with the donor. Doctors called her at the hotel after her visit, and the transplant was carried out that same day.

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A New Delhi man was arrested this past Saturday after stealing no less than eight motorcycles to impress his girlfriend who had allegedly teased him about not having one.

The culprit, known only as Lalit, had reportedly never shied away from throwing and attending parties in the New Delhi area, as a way of impressing his girlfriend. But on Valentine’s Day, last month, his efforts appeared pointless as she started teasing him about not having his own motorcycle. She was right, but he felt hurt by her words, so together with a close friend, Lalit decided he would get not one but many motorcycles to prove his worth to his girlfriend. Unfortunately, his plan only landed him in jail.

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We know how devoted Donald Trump’s American supporters can be, but they have nothing on the US President’s Indian “devotee”. Bussa Krishna literally worships Trump as a god, praying to a life-size statue of him every day, and making offerings of vermilion, turmeric and flowers to an altar that he built himself.

The 33-year-old from the remote village of Konne, in India’s Telangana state, first captured the media’s attention a couple of years ago, when pictures of him praying to the altar of Donald Trump and carrying a large portrait of the US President with him went viral online. Now, with Trump’s two-day visit to India being a major news topic, the Indian Trump devotee is once again newsworthy. A lot has happened in the last two years, But Krishna’s devotion to Donald Trump is still unwavering. If anything, it’s stronger than before, as evidenced by the statue of Trump that the Indian farmer placed in his yard.

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For the last two decades, Indian wildlife photographer and conservationist Aditya Singh and his wife have been buying land adjacent the famous Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, and simply letting the forest grow back as a refuge for big cats and other wildlife.

In 1998, Aditya Singh left his comfortable job with Indian civil services in Delhi and moved to a remote part of Rajasthan, in the vicinity of the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, to be closer to nature. He took up photography and together with his wife, artist Poonam Singh, opened a tourist resort to earn a living. They had been able to buy a piece of land, because farmers were eager to sell due to the danger of tigers from the nearby reserve venturing onto their properties. Over the year, the couple bought up more land, but instead of planting crops, they just let nature slowly reclaim it. Over the last 20 years, their 35 acres of land has transformed into a green forest patch where lions from the tiger reserve as well as wild boars and other animals come all year round.

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A 20-year-old Indian woman filed for divorce from her husband this week, claiming that he stank too bad, because he only bathed once every 10 days.

Soni Devi, a woman from Bihar’s Vaishali district, filed an application for divorce from her husband, on grounds that he did not maintain proper hygiene and did not have any manners. She argued that being married to her husband, a 23-year-old plumber had been a humiliation and had ruined her life. In her official divorce application, the 20-year-old woman wrote that her husband hardly ever bathed or brushed his teeth and didn’t follow any social etiquette rules. She asked the court to rid of her husband.

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Desperate to reclaim his farmland from a gang of invading monkeys, a farmer in Karnataka, India decided to pain his dog to look like a tiger in the hopes that it would scare the monkeys away.

Srikant Gowda, a farmer from Karnataka’s Shivamogga region, recently made international news headlines after it was reported that he used hair dye to paint his watchdog in the characteristic stripes of a tiger. The pooch already had a reddish hair color, so all he had to do was add the black stripes and some white to give it the tiger look. It wasn’t that Gowda had always wanted to own a tiger, but that he hoped the disguise would help the dog drive away the monkeys ravaging his crops.

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Did you know airplane pilots can skip airport security checks even on flights conducted by other airlines? Well, one Indian businessman certainly did, so he bought himself a pilot uniform so he could board planes faster.

Rajan Mahbubani, a 48-year-old consultancy agency owner from New Delhi, was recently arrested at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, after posing as a pilot for German airline Lufthansa. He was about to board an Air Asia flight to Kolkata, when the airline called Lufthansa offices to confirm the trip of a pilot wearing the German carrier’s uniform. A team of Lufthansa officials was sent to confirm the pilot’s identity, but after they confronted the suspicious pilot he admitted to impersonation.

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Retail giant Amazon recently found itself at the center of controversy in India, after it was reported that it is selling virginity pills that help women fake their virginity on wedding night.

Called “i-virgin”, the controversial product consists of small capsules containing a mysterious “blood-powder” that allegedly imitates human blood. All the user has to do is insert one of these pills in the vagina a couple of hours before the planned intercourse to fake virginity. The producer adds that the “high quality blood” completely dissolves, posing no health danger to the user. Amazon India has been accused that by selling a product which helps fake virginity on the first day of marriage it is supporting a centuries-old taboo.

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Wildlife experts in India are trying to make sens of the mysterious deaths of thousands of birds near the country’s largest inland lake. While the reported death toll is currently around 2,000, locals claimed that it could reach 5,000, as carcasses allegedly cover an area stretching from 12 to 15 km around the lake.

Sambhar Lake, 80km south-west of the city of Jaipur, is India’s largest inland lake and a popular gathering place for migratory birds like flamingos, storks, sandpipers, redshanks, black-winged stilts, among dozens of species. Last Sunday, however, locals alerted authorities that the lake shoreline had become an eerie graveyard for thousands of birds, with only a few dozen still left alive as far as the eye could see. There were reportedly so many bodies that when people first saw them, they mistook them for piles of cow dung, but it didn’t take them long to realize that they were really bird carcasses from more than 10 species.

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Government office workers in the Indian city of Banda, Uttar Pradesh state, recently drew a lot of attention online for wearing motorcycle helmets indoors to prevent head injuries in case the roof collapsed on them.

Photos of electricity department employees working at their office in Banda while wearing these large motorcycle helmets on their heads have been doing the round on social media ever since Indian news agency ANI shared them online. According to several sources, the government employees aren’t huge motorcycle fans, they’re just wearing the protective head gear in case the roof of the dilapidated building they work in starts to fall apart. They told reporters that they first reported the dangerous state of the office building several years ago, but no one did anything about it, so they decided to start wearing helmets.

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A 42-year-old man in India’s Uttar Pradesh state lost his life trying to eat 50 boiled eggs in one go, as part of a stupid bet he made with a friend.

On Monday, November 3rd, Subhash Yadav, 42, and a friend sat down to at get a bite to eat at the Bibiganj market in  the Jaunpur district. At one point, the pair began to argue and as their conflict escalated Yadav bet his friend 2,000 rupees (about $28) that he could eat 50 boiled eggs right then and there. His friend accepted, so they bought 50 eggs from a vendor and Yadav set out to down them one by one. Everything was going well and he was actually making good time, but as he popped the 42nd egg into his mouth, he suddenly fell unconscious.

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They say crows have great memory and never forget those who have wronged them, and the story of an Indian tractor driver who claims to have been constantly attacked by crows ever since they saw him pick up some of their hatchlings, a year and a half ago.

Mohanan, a tractor driver from Ambalavayal, a town in India’s Kerala state, has been carrying a stick and an umbrella to work every day, for over a year. It’s not that he fears getting attacked by dogs or that he hates rain, but that he needs to defend himself against the crows that always attack him whenever he approaches a bus station where he once picked up two crow hatchlings from under his tractor and placed them on the side of the road. As Mohan recalls, the following day, he and his colleagues found a small puppy covered in tar and washed it clean with kerosene, and he assumes the crow must have seen him and confused the puppy for the hatchlings that he had handled the previous day. The crows have been on his case ever since, harassing and attacking him whenever they see him.

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