The Corpse Smuggler

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In 2018 at the Chapra railway station in India a man was arrested under suspicion of smuggling skeletal human remains. Instead of being a one-off, it seems corpse smuggling is quite common. Question is, who wants them, and what for?

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Corpse smuggling is lucrative for medical and occult reasons

In his luggage he had 16 human skulls and 34 skeletons. He was thought to be part of a larger corpse smuggling ring that was taking the bones to China.

Sanjay Prasad was arrested, and it was discovered he worked with a gang who supplied the skeletons to "tantric and occultist" in the Himalayan Kingdom. There is also a high demand fueled by medical students in China. Not all are destined for medical use, tibias are turned into flutes and sole to Tibetan Buddhists. Prayer bowls are cut from the crown of skulls.

What Prasad wouldn't admit to is where he procured the skeletons from. It's believed the grave-robbing took place in Christian or Muslim cemeteries, since Hindus cremate their dead, however it has not been ruled out that morgue or crematorium attendants were bribed to turn over the skeletons to the gang.

Authorities were investigating liquor smuggling in the area, and stopped Prasad after he acted suspiciously, never guessing what he was carrying in his bags. He had foreign currency, indicating the tentacles regarding this dark trade extends into several countries. His intended destination was the border.

This horrid smuggling has been going on for some years. In 2004, 1,000 human skulls and parts of human carcasses were captured in the same area. In 2009, a smuggler was arrested in Bihar where more than 67 human skulls were seized.

The process of producing the final product ready for export from India involves the following:

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First the corpses were wrapped in netting and anchored in the river, where bacteria and fish reduced a body to a loose pile of bones and mush in a week or so. The crew then scrubbed the bones and boiled them in a cauldron of water and caustic soda to dissolve any remaining flesh. That left the calcium surfaces with a yellow tint. To bring them up to medical white, bones were then left in sunlight for a week before being soaked in hydrochloric acid.

18 human skeletons confiscated during a raid c.2017 (Source - HTTimes)

In 2017,  eight men were arrested after they were found with 365 bones. It's believed they were taken from decomposing bodies found in the nearby rivers of Burdwan district, India. They were cleaned with hydrogen peroxide, and the buyers were allegedly doctors and medical colleges.

In 1985, the Indian government outlawed the export of human remains, a practice which had been in existence for over a 100 years. That same year 1,500 child skeletons were found in the possession of a bone trader. Since they are rare and used to exemplify stages of osteological development, they command a higher price. The Indian media claimed the children were kidnapped and killed for their skeletons.

The ban  forced companies to manufacture plastic skeleton, and spurred the trade of real bones through the black market. 

In The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers (2011) author Scott Carney describes where prior to the ban, India was the leading source of human skeletons bound for medical colleges and laboratories across the world. It remained so even after the ban.

The epicenter of the black market for skeletons is West Bengal. Present day, obtaining a human skeleton legally in India is via hospitals who use unclaimed corpses. The smugglers have used forged documents to obtain the remains.

Throughout the years, the Indian authorities have arrested individuals smuggling human skulls and skeletons, but this seems to have little effect since the export has remained in operation and as lucrative as ever.

In 2023, the manager of The Harvard University Morgue was arrested along with his wife for selling body parts from cadavers donated to the medical school, which were supposed to be cremated.

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