UP man holds goat funeral, uses AI-generated image to fake death in court

A murder accused in Uttar Pradesh's Mau district allegedly used an AI-generated image of a body lying on a funeral pyre to procure a death certificate in an attempt to prove his own demise in court, police said on Sunday.

The accused held a funeral of a goat in Ghazipur and, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), he allegedly substituted his own body with that of a goat to evade legal action and avoid repaying the money he had taken from people on the pretext of stock market investing, they said.

Additional Superintendent of Police Anoop Kumar said police arrested Rajkumar Rajbhar alias Raju, 38, a resident of Mau's Kotwali Nagar police station area on Sunday.

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Rajbhar, who is an accused in the 2016 murder of Yogesh Singh, who was shot dead, allegedly concocted a false narrative about his own death during the course of the trial and submitted forged documents to the court in an attempt to escape legal proceedings, the officer said.

He said Rajbhar, who has not completed his Class 12th, was engaged in stock market trading and had collected funds from prominent individuals across several cities, claiming he would invest them in the stock market.

Acting on intelligence, the Kotwali Nagar police, with the assistance of the SOG (Special Operations Group) and the surveillance team, arrested the accused from near the Mau's Khwajajahanpur locality on Sunday morning, they said.

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According to the police, the accused hatched a conspiracy on May 30, 2025, in Ghazipur to stage his own death. As part of this, an AI-generated image depicting a body lying on a funeral pyre at a cremation ground was allegedly used.

It is alleged that images of a funeral procession and the final rites were also orchestrated to make the narrative of his death appear authentic.

Subsequently, Rajbhar allegedly procured various documents, including a death certificate from the Mau Municipal Council.

He then submitted these documents to a court in an attempt to prove his own death, before going into hiding. However, following an investigation, the police uncovered the alleged conspiracy and arrested him.

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Police said that a case has been registered at the Kotwali Nagar police station against the accused for allegedly procuring forged documents to falsely represent himself as deceased.