Grave-robbing cannibals busted–again
Grave-robbing cannibals busted–again
April 21, 2014 9:31 AM By Kristal Hawkins
Pakistani authorities suspect that two brothers who already spent two years in jail on cannibalism charges are at it again. Mohammed Arif Ali, 35, and Mohammed Farman Ali, 33, had allegedly spirited some 100 corpses from a graveyard in Darya Khan, Bhakkar–and ate them. Among their meals was the corpse of a 24-year-old woman, dead of cancer, who had been reported as missing from her tomb just a day after her funeral. When police investigated the men’s home, they found the woman, minus her legs–which the brothers had used in a batch of curry.
They confessed to dismembering her and eating human flesh in 2011. No law expressly prohibits cannibalism, but the brothers were convicted of desecrating a corpse.
Now, after neighbors complained of a rotting stench coming from their house, Darya Khan Superintendent of Police Ameer Abdullah and colleagues have found a three-year-old boy’s head in the brothers’ home in Sarghoda, in remote northwestern Pakistan. The decapitated head was next to a stove, on which a pot of meat curry was cooking.
On April 14, 2014, cops arrested Arif, and began a hunt for Farman, whom they apprehended hours later on the outskirts of the village. The brothers were taken to an anti-terrorist court, where, held separately, they each refused to touch the prison food they were offered.
During his initial interrogation, Arif reportedly admitted chopping up the child’s body and cooking it into a curry, but he blamed his brother’s influence and denied consuming any of the curry himself.
Both men are being held for a week as authorities gather evidence against them. If found guilty, they’ll likely receive a similarly another light sentence once again.
The brothers were examined by university neuropsychologists during their initial jail stint, but neither academics nor police have leaked any hints regarding the motivation behind their ghoulish crimes. In 2011, neighbors said the men had been engaging in cannibalism for years, and that it was an act of revenge against their wives, who had left them and taken the children with them.
