On 11th December 1926, Shanti Devi was born in the city of Delhi. At the age of four, she told her parents that her home was in Mathura, a city in Uttar Pradesh, also known as the birthplace of Lord Krishna. Devi would turn out to be one of the earliest documented cases of reincarnation. As she grew older, she even refused to accept her birth parents.
In Hinduism and Buddhism, it is believed that after death, the soul is born again on Earth if it has not achieved Moksha—liberation from the cycle of birth and death. It is also believed that the soul forgets its past life.
But Devi claimed to remember her past life, in which she died ten days after giving birth. She remembered the name of her husband from her past life, Kedar Nath Choubey. Devi was nine years old then and started attracting attention across India as news of her remembering her past life spread. "For the first time in history, a committee of fifteen persons, including journalists, was constituted to investigate the veracity of the statements made by the girl, claiming to be a Chouban (member of the Choubey family) of Mathura in her past life. Mathura, a town 145 kilometres from Delhi, had never been visited by the girl or her parents. Spiritualists and rationalists, scientists and laymen visited Delhi and Mathura either to investigate dispassionately, to support their religious beliefs, or to entirely expose what they saw as a hoax," states The Life Beyond: Through the Eyes of Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives, a journal by Dr Kirti Swaroop Rawat and Titus Rivas.
A critic called Sture Lönnerstrand came from Sweden to prove her claims as fake. However, after completing his investigations, he stated, "This is the only fully explained and proven case of reincarnation there has ever been."
Devi claimed that her name in her past life was Lugdi and would even vividly describe her home in Mathura. Her parents tried to distract her, but she kept insisting on visiting Mathura. Finally, one of her relatives asked her to give the address of her "past home" in Mathura. He wrote a letter to the address. The reply shocked and baffled everyone, as whatever Devi had said was true.
A relative of her "past life husband" was allowed to interview Devi. He was Kanji Mal, a younger cousin of Choubey, and Devi recognised him easily. "After this conversation,” he wrote, “I was convinced that the girl was really my own relation, now personating in another body."
Finally, when Choubey came to meet her along with his third wife (Lugdi was his second wife) in Delhi, Devi recognised him and wept when she saw her son , who much older to her in the present life. Choubey even asked her some intimate questions to ascertain her identity and was satisfied with her answers.
Devi never married and would regularly visit Mathura.