Indian police have arrested four
suspected corpse smugglers and
recovered 18 intact skeletons and other
bones believed exhumed from
cemeteries in a notorious grave-robbing
district, an official said Tuesday.
Police seized the “neatly washed and
cleaned” human remains from a village
in West Bengal state’s Burdwan district
on Sunday that led to the arrest of four
men allegedly part of an international
smuggling ring.
“The skeletons, neatly washed and
cleaned were about to be smuggled and
sold. We suspect that they are part of an
international skeleton smuggling
racket,” Anuj Sharma, West Bengal’s
deputy police chief, told AFP.
Sharma said the recovery was part of a
larger consignment that was being
smuggled out of the area.
Investigators have identified the
recipients of the cache that they suspect
was stolen from graveyards in the
Muslim dominated district.
In 2006, violence broke out in the
village over the security of graveyards
after police seized more than 20 human
skulls, with locals demanding armed
guards protect the burial sites.
A year later 50 skulls were recovered
from the same district.
India banned the trade of human bones
in 1985 after coming under pressure
from human rights groups that argued
the practice violated the basic principles
of humanity, but it simultaneously
forced the trade underground.
Before the ban, many poor families
were selling the corpses to smugglers to
save on cremation or burials costs in the
poverty-stricken region.
Local gangs steal corpses from burning
pyres and graves, with many relying on
morgues that sell them unclaimed
bodies for few thousands rupees.
The eastern state is notorious for the
illegal trade and has become a hub of
the thriving industry, with thousands of
human skeletons smuggled out of India
every year to Nepal, China and
Bangladesh.
The skeletons are often sent to the US,
Japan, Europe and the Middle East
where they are used as specimens in
medical colleges. Some of them are sent
to China to be used in the production of
aphrodisiac drugs or within India for
black magic and other Hindu rituals.
Over the years, police have recovered
thousands of skeletons from West
Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand states.
Police in Bihar recovered about 1000
skulls from the banks of river Falgu in
the ancient Buddhist town of Bodhgaya
in 2004.
In 2009, police arrested a smuggler with
67 human skulls and bones from a
passenger bus in Bihar’s Chappra
district, less than a month before West
Bengal recovered 27 children’s’ skulls
and 100 bones from a passenger in
Silliguri district.
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