A missing Deutsche Bank exec was buried in a pauper\u2019s grave for 20 years because the city failed to properly investigate when his body washed up near his FiDi home, according to court papers.<\/p>\n
Rand Kandoria, an operations officer for international settlements at the prestigious bank, was missing for nearly a week when a pal called the NYPD on Dec. 27, 2004 to report the British native\u2019s disappearance. <\/p>\n
Kandoria, 43, lived at 99 John St., where one-bedroom apartments now go for roughly $1 million. <\/p>\n
Kandoria was 43 and working at Deutsche Bank when he went missing in December 2004.<\/p>\n
His panicked family back home in the UK filed a missing person\u2019s report<\/a> and stayed in touch with investigators. <\/p>\n \u201cFor months . . . the family repeatedly contacted the NYPD and were repeatedly told that there were no updates,\u201d they said in a Manhattan Supreme Court filing. <\/p>\n Two months after the banker went missing, a body surfaced near Pier 11 in the East River, about a half a mile from his home.<\/p>\n Like Kandoria, the body in the water was male, in his early 40s, and of north Indian descent.<\/p>\n But investigators allegedly failed to make the connection or even check if the missing man\u2019s fingerprints matched the John Doe fished out of the river, the Kandorias claimed in court papers.<\/p>\n Instead, the city sent the anonymous corpse to its longtime land of lost souls: Hart Island.<\/p>\n More than 1 million people have been buried<\/a> in the 45-acre spit of land off the Bronx, the city\u2019s Potter\u2019s Field for those too poor to afford a proper grave, or with no loved ones to give them a final goodbye.<\/p>\n The John Doe was buried in Grave No. 313.<\/p>\n More than a million people are buried on Hart Island. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cFor 20 years, the Kandoria family was unaware of what had happened to Rand. They were unable to mourn or process their loss,\u201d according to court papers seeking permission to file a lawsuit after legal deadlines had expired.<\/p>\n Rand\u2019s father, Rai, died on March 11, 2015.<\/p>\n Determined to get to the truth, the missing man\u2019s brother, Sham Kandoria, hired private investigator Rosanna Licitra in 2024. In January 2025 he again reached out to the NYPD along with the city Medical Examiner.<\/p>\n Two months later, an NYPD detective delivered the shocking news: Rand had actually been found decades ago.<\/p>\n A staffer in the Medical Examiner\u2019s office told Sham she\u2019d matched the fingerprints of the man in Grave 313 to what the city had on file for Rand. Last year Rand Kandoria\u2019s remains were exhumed, and Sham Kandoria arranged for cremation.<\/p>\n The cemetery at Hart Island is a Potter\u2019s Field, meant for those who cannot afford a burial or whose bodies are unclaimed. AP<\/p>\n \u201cIn August of 2025, Sham traveled to New York to collect his brother\u2019s ashes and [brought] them back to the United Kingdom for a proper burial,\u201d according to court papers.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter 20 years, the family was finally able to [bury] . . . Rand Kandoria in February of 2026 and receive the closure they so desperately needed.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first time the city failed to realize it had wrongly buried someone on Hart Island<\/a>.<\/p>\n