They target graves in rural areas

Body snatching and selling of the skeletons have everything of an illicit trade.

There are three tiers in the business. In the bottom tier of course are the people who actually steal the human remains but get the smallest share of the pie.

The tiers above are all populated by middlemen, who earn way more than those who risk getting beaten up, lynched or jailed for breaking one of the most sacred norms of society.

And like every other illicit trade, the people who belong to the intermediate tiers often remain beyond the reach of the law and the media.

This Daily Star correspondent managed to get hold of a body snatcher.

In this story, he will be referred to as “Humayun”, which of course is not his real name. Humayun only agreed to talk to The Daily Star over the phone.

“We usually target unclaimed, unidentified bodies of mostly poor people buried unceremoniously at unguarded public graveyards,” said Humayun.

They mostly work in the rural areas because most graveyards in the urban settings have security guards. However, they sometimes steal bodies from graveyards in cities by bribing the guards.

They usually do not steal from large well-known graveyards, like the Azimpur or Banani graveyards, as those are well protected.

After spotting a grave of an unclaimed body, Humayun and his men usually wait at least one month to make sure that there are no late claims of the body.

“We work late at night, usually after 12 midnight,” Humayun said. They dig the graves in the dark, collect the body and hand it over to the other groups, who turn them into sellable skeletons.

People like Humayun get around Tk 5,000 for the remains from one grave. The pay might sound good but there is no reason to believe they get work every day.

This is pretty much all that the people, who belong to the bottom tier of the racket, know about the trade.

The rest is foggy, even to Humayun.

According to police, however, several such rackets of “skeleton thieves” are active across the country.

A gang of corpse traders used to supply decaying bodies from Mymensingh graveyard allegedly to Kamruzzaman Rony, who was arrested at the capital's Kafrul on November 5 for hiding 35 skeletons in a rented flat.

They used to sell the skeletons between Tk 25,000 and Tk 30,000.

While talking to the tenants of the building where Rony used to stay and from where skeletons were recovered, and from Mymensingh police, more information on this trade was revealed.

According to the tenants, they were suspicious of Rony's activities. They themselves found out what he was actually doing and then handed him over to the police.

Rony told police that they would bring bodies from Mymensingh graveyard and other areas then separate the flesh from the bones by boiling or chopping. They would then sell them to first-year medical students.

Rony and his cohorts would bring in the decaying bodies in cartons. They used to sell the skeletons in Mymensingh but due to a few problems there, they moved to Dhaka to continue their trade.

At times, the tenants witnessed suspicious handing over of cartons at night.

The tenants, who had grilled Rony before handing him over to the police, said a man named Tonmoy from Mymensingh and his men would provided Rony with skeletons in cartons for Tk 5,000-10,000.

Contacted, Kotowali Police Station of Mymensingh OC Kamrul Islam said, "In 2014 and 2015 we arrested a few people involved in stealing corpses and they told us that they supply skeletons to Dhaka."

Asked if Rony had any connection with Mymensingh's gang, OC Sikder of Kafrul Police Station said, "We are still investigating this matter."

On November 5, pungent odour and sputtering sound from the second-floor flat of a building at Kafrul in the capital seriously annoyed the tenants. Rony had been living there for about 8-9 months claiming himself to be a doctor of Mitford Hospital.

Tenants of the building had been vexed with the noise and odour but on that evening, it was more than bearable. They knocked at the door of the flat and got response after a suspicious delay.

When Rony finally opened the door, the tenants stormed the flat and demanded to know what Rony and his men were doing.   

What they saw was horrifying. Human flesh, bones, and skulls were scattered everywhere on the floor. They found electric heaters for boiling the bodies so that the flesh separate from the bones.

They found a room which was used for hiding decaying corpses.

Several litres of perfume and kerosene were there apparently to conceal the odour. Threads and bone cutters were also found.

The landlord of the building, Elias Saifullah, said, "I didn't know what Rony and his men had been doing in there but they told me that since they were doctors they conduct a few experiments which cause noise and bad odour."