Khaberni - The city of Esna in Luxor province, southern Egypt, witnessed a bizarre incident, when a citizen was shocked while heading to renew his national ID card to find out that he was registered as "deceased" in the official records since 2016.
"Ahmed", the son of the man involved in the incident, narrated to local media outlets the initial moments of discovering the crisis, explaining that his father went to the civil registry office to complete the routine procedures for renewing his national ID, but suddenly, the responsible official stopped working to inform him that the "electronic system" data confirms the death of the cardholder standing in front of him for about 10 years.
Upon further legal investigation and review of the documents, inquiries revealed a mystery dating back decades, where it turned out that the citizen had a brother with the same name who died in childhood, and the family then named the new born with the same name as his late brother.
The same official documents
For all those years, the family relied on the deceased brother’s birth certificate without obtaining separate official papers for the new born, a practice that used to occur in some Egyptian villages in the past.
Following the spread of the incident, the Civil Status Department responded urgently, where officials from the civil registry moved to the family’s home to review all the documents and historical records of the family.
The authorities technically corrected the error in the database and issued a legal birth certificate for the citizen, paving the way for him to obtain a new national ID card that ends his status as "deceased" in the official documents.
