Khawar Kalan: Cannibalism is termed as ritualistic eating of human flesh by a human being. Pakistani police arrested a second man suspected along with his brother of eating a newborn baby whose head was found at their home. The shocking discovery was made after neighbours complained about the stench of rotting flesh.
Farman Ali has been detained a day after police arrested his brother Mohammad Arif following the grisly discovery at their house in a remote district in Punjab province. Arif and Farman, who are from the small town of Darya Khan in Bhakkar district, were previously arrested in April 2011 after they were found to have disinterred corpses in the local graveyard for the purpose of eating them.
It was reported that the brothers had dug up and devoured parts from up to 150 bodies before they were finally caught. They served two years in prison in a case that shocked Pakistan.
Police official in 2011, Fakhar Bhatti, reported his horror at discovering the corpse of the woman that led to their first conviction. He told of a trail of ants leading under the bed where her body minus the lower limbs was discovered.
He added: “In the middle of the room, I saw a cooking pot which was half full of meat curry. Nearby was a wooden board, a butcher’s axe and a large kitchen knife. Bits of fat clung to the board and the blade of the axe. “It still gives me the creeps; they had chopped off one of her legs below the knee, and the other near the shin. The rest of the body was intact. The curry was made from those parts.”
This time, Arif admitted to the police that Ali stole the body of the two-day-old child from a graveyard in Darya Khan village, around 300km south of Islamabad, before they cooked and ate it.
Since Pakistan has no specific laws against cannibalism, they were originally arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) section of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), and were later charged under section 295-A of the PPC. They were sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined Rs 50,000 each.
After the completion of their sentence, they were released from Mianwali’s district jail and returned to their hometown, to the shock and outrage of residents.
Amusingly, the two brothers had spent most of their two year prison term in King Edwards’s medical college Lahore, where they were being examined by the neurophysiology department, which seems to have back fired.