The Blue Sisters' shared coma and recovery

The Blue Sisters' shared coma and recovery turns a devastating private crisis into a public story of survival: Rasheed’s wife and her sister were pronounced dead after falling into comas, yet both revived and later became celebrated as the Blue Sisters. Their recovery reshaped their lives and the slum around them, while the story’s growing reputation as a miracle rested on a clear distinction between what happened to the women and what admirers believed their powers could do.

Collapse and Apparent Death

After Rasheed took the sisters’ money, their health deteriorated rapidly. They were hospitalized, and first one sister and then the other fell into a coma. Anand remained at the hospital long enough to see sheets pulled over their faces after they were pronounced dead within minutes of each other. Overcome by anger and guilt, he went looking for Rasheed; after finding him, Anand killed him, then gave himself up and confessed. The sisters’ apparent deaths thus set off a second crisis, one that ended with Anand charged with murder.

Awakening and Recovery

The sisters’ deaths were not final. Half an hour after they had been pronounced dead, Rasheed’s wife stirred beneath the sheet; a few minutes later, her sister moved and groaned. Lin later described them as alive and well. Their return overturned the hospital’s declaration and the grief that had followed it, but the account does not explain medically how they recovered from the comas.

Their hut in the slum became a shrine, drawing visitors from across Bombay who came to see the women described as having returned from the dead. The influx of pilgrims also changed the sisters’ material circumstances: visitors gave them money a rupee or two at a time, donations accumulated, and their hut’s new reputation brought brisk trade to businesses in the slum. The women used their new resources to establish a charity for abandoned wives.

The Blue Sisters’ Public Story

The name Blue Sisters was given to them by their devotees, not chosen by the women themselves. After awakening, the sisters reportedly shared a dream of floating in the sky and thereafter always wore blue. Their shared experience became the distinctive image around which their public identity formed.

Kavita Singh’s syndicated newspaper article carried their story beyond the slum. It recounted the sisters’ history and included first-hand accounts of cures that people attributed to their mystical powers: one woman claimed to have recovered from tuberculosis, another said her hearing had returned, and an elderly man credited touching the hem of their blue garments with restoring his lungs. These were reported as devotees’ claims, not established medical findings. Kavita’s article nevertheless concluded with her own conviction that the sisters were special, perhaps supernatural, beings. Lin encountered the account in a newspaper and marked it for Anand’s prison visit, where the women’s unexpected recovery could be set beside the chain of events that had led to Anand’s confession and charge.