Ravi Patel Shares Details About the Tragic Loss of His Daughter

Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. If you’ve ever lost someone — especially a child — you already know it’s not the kind of pain you get over. You just learn to carry it differently.

What happened to Animal Control star Ravi Patel’s daughter isn’t just a heartbreaking story — it’s a window into how one family keeps choosing love, memory, and meaning in the aftermath of unimaginable loss.

Saachi Patel was born in February 2023. Five days later, her parents and big sister had to say goodbye. Ravi shared the news with the kind of openness most people run from: “On 2.7.23, we held our sweet sweet Saachi girl in our arms as she became an angel.”

The actor revealed her cause of death was meconium aspiration syndrome. According to the Cleveland Clinic, it is a condition that happens when a baby inhales their first stool, called meconium, into their lungs before or during birth. It can cause serious breathing problems, and in rare cases like Saachi’s, it becomes fatal.

You could feel the heartbreak in every word of Ravi’s Instagram post. “She fought and we fought,” he wrote. “Everyone is destroyed and seeking.”

Sadly, the grief didn’t stop there — because it never really does. In December of that same year, Ravi’s wife talked about how taking a family photo without their daughter felt wrong. Like a betrayal. They, however, also felt as though they would be betraying their older daughter, Amelie, by not taking the family photos. Ultimately, the couple overcame by learning that pain and joy can coexist.

Ravi’s wife, Mahaley Patel, frequently shares her grief — and her love — through letters to Saachi, often on milestones and birthdays via Instagram. Her words are raw, real, and painfully familiar to anyone who’s ever lost a child.

In one letter, she wrote: “I miss her so deeply. The kind of missing that sits heavy in your chest and steals your breath. Time hasn’t eased the heartbreak of her absence.”

Ravi's wife admits to thinking about losing Saachi over and over again — in morning pancakes, in playground laughter, and during bedtime snuggles with her other kids. That kind of grief isn’t something you move past. It lives in every day.

Via her Instagram, she writes not just for Saachi, but for anyone who needs to know that joy can still exist after loss. “Time has also taught me how to carry the weight of her earthly absence,” she said. “It has softened some of the anger. Grief, like time, is a double-edged sword. It takes, but it also gives.”

What happened to Ravi’s daughter could’ve been something they chose to keep private. Instead, he and Mahaley made a different choice — to let people in. To speak their daughter’s name. They shared their worst pain with the world. Ravi and his wife want the world to know they never moved on from the death of their daughter. For the rest of their children, however, they have found a way to move forward as they coexist with the grief.