The Shiva-Sumitra Possession Case

Antonia Mills received her PhD in Anthropology & Child Development from Harvard University and has been engaged in studies of Cases of the Reincarnation Type since 1984, both among North American Indian peoples and in India. She was a Research Assistant Professor in Ian Stevenson's Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia from 1988-1994 and since has been teaching First Nations Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada.

Ian Stevenson and Satwant Pasricha, researched and reported on the case of Sumitra Singh, a young woman of the Khastiya caste, who apparently died and then returned to consciousness but experienced herself as Shiva Tripatri, a young college-educated Brahmin housewife and the mother of two who had died under suspicious circumstances. The two families were unknown to each other. Sumitra had never gone to school although she had learned how to write somewhat from her cousin. Stevenson and others documented that Sumitra and her family had no knowledge of Shiva and her family, and yet Sumitra recognized Shiva's father when he came to see her, and other family members when Sumitra and her husband went the 75 kilometers to the Tripathi home.

Last year, Dr Mills and Dr. Kuldip Dhiman conducted a follow up study to translate and assess letters written by Sumitra/Shiva and to compare them with a letter written by the original Shiva.  Dr Mills will argue that the case presents strong evidence of the survival of Shiva's consciousness after her bodily death.