Police arrest two for suspected cannibalism in India

Police in India arrested two men who were allegedly found eating the half-burnt remains of a human body in an inebriated condition.

The arrests were made from the eastern Odisha state’s Mayurbhanj district on Tuesday after the men were caught committing the act at a funeral.

Local media said police identified the two men as 58-year-old Sundar Mohan Singh and 25-year-old Narendra Singh.

The men were related to the woman who was being cremated, according to a report in The Times of India newspaper. Followers of the Hindu religion cremate their dead.

Local villagers told the police that the two men, from the district’s Dantuni village, started eating the remains while the funeral was underway.

The two men allegedly showed no remorse when confronted by the villagers.

B Gangadhar, a local police superintendent in Mayurbhanj district, told the media that the men “have been arrested based on prima facie evidence”.

Another official in charge of a local police station, Sabjay Parida, said one of the accused had confessed to eating human flesh.

“Sundar Mohan Singh, one of the accused, is a [self-styled] sorcerer. He did so under the influence of liquor and confessed to his actions,” Mr Parida was quoted as saying by several media outlets.

The two men will reportedly undergo psychiatric evaluations.

The police are also investigating if the two accused had indulged in the practice of cannibalism before this incident.

One of the most disturbing cases that involved cannibalism in the country, dubbed the “Nithari killings”, had occurred in 2006. At least 19 young women and children had been killed and dismembered inside a house, known as the “house of horrors”, in Noida city’s Nithari area.

The accused, businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surinder Koli, were subsequently sentenced to death for the crimes. Koli had admitted to eating some of the body parts.

In 2017, Iranian-American scholar Reza Aslan courted controversy after eating a human brain on camera while filming with an obscure Hindu sect in India, prompting condemnation from members of the religion’s mainstream.