A woman’s funeral in Peru was interrupted when the woman herself started banging on the lid of the coffin to say she was still alive.

In a shocking twist to a tragic day, stunned relatives carrying the coffin of Rosa Isabel Cespede Callaca, 36, opened it and found their relative with her eyes open looking at them.

Rosa and the coffin were rushed to nearby Referential Hospital Ferrenafe on the back of a pickup truck where she was quickly hooked up to a life support machine.

Sheepish medics confirmed that she did have vital signs – albeit very low ones – and her condition improved slightly once on life support, giving hope that a miracle was in progress.

But Rosa’s condition then rapidly deteriorated and she passed away a few hours later.

Cemetery caretaker Juan Segundo Cajo said: ‘[She] opened her eyes and was sweating. I immediately went to my office and called the police.’

A video taken shortly after the astounding discovery shows a team of police carrying the coffin through a crowd to a pickup truck. The video then cuts to a team of medics standing over the open coffin with an unconscious Rosa at their feet.

Rosa had been in a serious car crash on a road in the Chiclayo-Picsi region which claimed the life of her brother-in-law and seriously injured her nephews.

She too had been pronounced dead after the crash and her relatives had arranged a funeral for her on April 26 in the city of Lambayque.

Her relatives expressed predictable outrage that Rosa had been declared dead and sent to the morgue for a funeral ‘in the first place’.

An unnamed aunt furious with the hospital said: ‘We want to know why my niece reacted yesterday, when we were taking her to be buried.

‘We have the videos in which she pushes and touches the coffin.’

It has been speculated that the medics at the Referential Hospital Ferrenafe where she had been taken initially after the crash had mistaken a coma for being dead.

Police are now investigating whether staff at the hospital negligently took Rosa off life support, pronounced her dead and sent her to the morgue without proper review to check that she was actually dead.

Rosa’s three nephews, who were injured in the same crash as she, are said to be recovering in hospital but still in a serious condition.