KUALA LUMPUR, June 28 ― A bride received an unexpected wedding gift in a a wax statue of her late father.

Both she and her mother were caught by surprise and teared up after they saw the wax statue revealed at the wedding, India.com reported.

The bride's brother, Avula Phani, had arranged for the wax statue to be made and presented ― it as a surprise gift to her sister during her wedding day.

According to an interview with SumanTV Entertainment, Phani shared that their father had passed away due to Covid-19 and he decided to create a wax statue as a tribute, which took over a year to complete and was made in southwestern state of Karnataka.

A video of the wax statue was first featured on the Instagram page of FeatureIndia.In and went viral with an astonishing 11.4 million views.

In Karnataka, owning lifelike wax statues of deceased loved ones is not an uncommon practice for grieving family members.

A businessman named Shrinivas Gupta built a silicon wax statue of his wife Madhavi, following her death in a car accident, Asian News International reported.

The wax statue which took a year to complete, was built and placed inside his late wife's dream house.