AFP
Mohammad Arif has admitted to eating the corpse of a baby after his brother, Farman Ali, stole it from a graveyard.
A man in Punjab province was arrested Monday on suspicion of cannibalism when the head of a newborn baby was found at his home—three years after he was jailed for the same offense.
Police raided the house in a remote village in the 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, 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 body of the newborn from the nearby graveyard,” said Ameer Abdullah, police chief of Bhakkar district where the village is located. “Arif told police that both of them later cooked the 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 offenses.
In the earlier case police found the body of a 24-year-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, said that the men’s wives and family members had left them some years ago and both were living in the house in isolation. “The neighbors 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.