After the head of a newborn baby was found at a Pakistani man's house, he has been arrested on suspicion of stealing corpses from graveyards and eating human remains, Agence France-Presse reported.
Three years after 36-year-old Mohammed Arif was jailed for the same offense, police raided his house in a remote village in Punjab province on Monday. When neighbors complained of a foul smell, the head of the two-day-old baby was discovered inside the house upon investigation.
Arif and his brother Farman Ali, 33, were jailed in April 2011 after admitting to digging up graves, stealing as many as 150 bodies and eating the exhumed flesh, according to The Express Tribune.
In a case that shocked Pakistan, they served two years in prison.
In Darya Khan village, around 300km south of Islamabad, Ali stole the body from a graveyard. Arif admitted to eating the child after his brother had brought the corpse back home, officers said.
"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, said.
"Arif told police that both of them later cooked the dead body and ate it."
Since Pakistan's penal code does not state a specific law against cannibalism, Arif's 2011 case was based on charges of desecrating a dead body and public order offences, according to AFP.
"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," AFP reported.
As Arif undergoes psychiatric tests, a hunt has been initiated in search of Ali, Abdullah said.
Since the men's wives and family members had left them some years ago, both brothers were living in the house in isolation, Zafar Iqbal, a police official in Darya Khan police station, where Arif is being held, said.
"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.
