Walking dead in Romania: as authorities reject man's claim of being alive

Constantin Reliu a 63-year old returned home to Romania after more than 20 years of working in Turkey only to learn that his wife had had him officially registered as dead. He states that he has been living a legalistic nightmare trying to convince and prove the authorities that he is, in fact, alive. Constantin has faced a major setback on Thursday (March 15) when a courthouse in the North-Eastern city of Vaslui refused to overturn his death certificate because his request was filed “too late”. According to the court, the decision is final and cannot be changed. Reliu told Foreign Media that he is a “living Ghost” and that he is “officially dead even though I am alive”. During the interview Constantin Reliu has been deeply emotional, starting off by saying “I think I am going to cry” and going on to voice rage and a desire for revenge against his wife, who now lives in Italy. He explained that he went off to work in Turkey in 1992 and returned in 1995 to the first big shock of his marriage, his wife's infidelity. In 1999 he has decided to return to work in Turkey for good. Foreign media states that they were not able to locate Reliu's wife to hear her side of the story. Last year (2017) Turkish authorities have detained him over expired papers and in January this year (2018), he was deported to Romania. When his flight landed at Bucharest airport, he was informed by border officials that he had been officially declared dead and had to undergo six hours of interrogation. After the six-hour-long interrogation, the officials comparing his details to his passport details, questioning and checking his fingerprints has come to a decision that it is him. Authorities in Barlad have failed to convince themselves of the truth, therefore, he spent weeks trying to persuade them to issue his papers so that he officially can “exist”. When that failed, he asked them to overturn the ruling on his death certificate which was issued in 2016, which also ended in failure on procedural grounds. According to Reliu, he would like to file a fresh lawsuit but has no money and suffers from diabetes, which makes it, even more, harder for him to survive. Further, he stated that he has been banned for life from returning to Turkey but would like to write to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to appeal the decision.