Paranormal Activity | Hauntings at the Karkardooma Court

Strange CCTV footage, computers that get turned on automatically, and the story of a prisoner's wrongful conviction. Read ahead to find out about the real story behind the paranormal activity at the Karkardooma Court in Delhi.

Karkardooma Hauntings. Illustrated by Dishani Goswami, Visual Storyteller at ThisDay

In the year 2014, strange events took place at the Karkardooma High Court in Delhi. The computers would turn on by themselves at night, the files used to fly out of cabinets magically, and chairs and doors in offices kept shifting on their own.

And to everyone’s astonishment, the CCTV footage of these events were played on primetime news, thanks to all the leading news channels. Karkardooma was being hailed as the playground of a vengeful spirit, and people were convinced that this spirit is seeking revenge because it was a victim of injustice right in this very court.

India’s leading paranormal investigator Gaurav Tiwari broke this case to the media, turning it into a national sensation. This was the case that turned Gaurav and his team into celebrities overnight.

But, the truth behind this haunting came much later. Years after Gaurav’s death, his teammate Waqar Raj talked about how this haunting made their careers. And with this he also told us the truth of Karkardooma.

Waqar said that their investigation of Karkardooma premises showed no signs of any ghostly activity. The computers switched on because they had Scheduled Maintenance turned on, a feature that makes computers turn on automatically at a predetermined time. And the CCTV footage doing rounds turned out to be clippings from a Hollywood TV show.

This truth came out several years after Karkardooma was declared haunted by India’s leading TV channels. Gaurav Tiwari is no more, and his team is scattered all over India. But those clips are still available on YouTube if you wish to see how rationality was abandoned by the leading news channels (who were supposed to tell us that science does not approve of ghosts).

But when news anchors claim to have witnessed ghosts themselves during their ‘investigation’, I don't know to whom we can turn to for common sense. This case is a reminder of how the mainstream media cares only about eyeballs and not the truth.