A Pakistani man was arrested on 14/04/2014 Monday on
suspicion of cannibalism when the head of a newborn baby was found at his home.
Police raided the house in a remote village in Punjab
province after neighbors complained of a foul smell and found the head of the
two day old baby inside.
Householder Mohammad Arif admitted eating the child after
his brother stole the body from a graveyard in Darya Khan Village, around 300km
(180 miles) south of Islamabad, officers said.
Arif and his brother Farman Ali were arrested for eating
human corpses in the same village in April 2011 and served two years in prison,
in a case that shocked Pakistan.
“Arif has been arrested and he has confessed that his
brother brought the dead body of the newborn from the nearby graveyard,” Ameer
Abdullah, police chief of Bhakkar district where the village is located, told
AFP.
“Arif told police that both of them later cooked the dead
body and ate it.”
There is no specific law against cannibalism in
Pakistan’s penal code, so as in the 2011 case Arif has been charged with
desecrating a dead body and public order offences.
In the earlier case police found the body of a 24 years old
woman who had recently died of cancer at the men’s house, minus a leg, which
they had eaten. A hunt is under way to find Ali, Abdullah said, while
Arif will undergo psychiatric tests.
Zafar Iqbal, a police official in Darya Khan police
station, where Arif is being held, told AFP that the men’s wives and family
members had left them some years ago and both were living in the house in
isolation.
“The neighbours complained to police of a foul stench and
police raided the house immediately. We arrested him after discovering a head
of a baby. Arif has admitted his crime,” Iqbal said.