Notorious Pakistan cannibal arrested after 3-year-old boy’s head found at home; cops hunt sicko’s brother

Police in Pakistan arrested one man and are hunting for another after the head of a 3-year-old boy was found in their home in Punjab province. Mohammad Arif Ali admitted to cooking the boy's body parts into a curry, authorities said.

By Philip Caulfield - New York Daily News

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

A known cannibal in Pakistan has been arrested for allegedly eating human flesh again after police found the head of a 3-year-old boy in the home he shares with his brother.

Mohammad Arif Ali was arrested Monday after neighbors complained about a dead body stench wafting from his home in Darya Khan, in Punjab Province.

"They probably dug up his body from a grave, but the identity of the child and the graveyard from where his body might have been stolen is not clear," local police chief Ameer Abdullah Khan told BBC.

Cops said Ali admitted to boiling the toddler's body into a curry along with his brother, Farman Ali, whom police were still looking for.

"During initial interrogation, Arif has admitted they chopped the body and cooked it, but blames it all on his elder brother and denies he either helped him or devoured the curry," Khan said.

The brothers were both arrested in 2011 after police said they dug up a woman's dead body and cooked it into a meat curry.

The men were jailed for two years after they admitted to cutting up and eating the woman's lower limbs.

Last year, the investigator who led the raid told BBC about the moment he discovered the 24-year-old cancer victim's butchered corpse at the Ali brothers' house of horrors.

"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," the police inspector, Fakhar Bhatti, said.

"It still gives me the creeps; they had chopped off one of her legs below the knee, and the other one near the shin. The rest of the body was intact. The curry was made from those parts," he said.

During their arrest, the brothers told police they'd been digging up bodies for the past few years.

The pair was released from prison in May 2013, sparking protests in their town.

Boy's HEAD found in home of Pakistani cannibals who had dug up more than 100 corpses from the local graveyard and eaten them

Three-year-old boy's head found in home of convicted cannibals in Pakistan
Discovery made after residents complained of 'stench' at the house
One brother arrested while the other is being hunted by police
Men previously jailed for digging up and eating 100 corpses at burial site

By Julian Robinson

April 14, 2014

Two convicted cannibals have been rearrested in Pakistan after a young boy's head was discovered in their home.

The gruesome discovery of a three-year-old's head was made in the house of Mohammad Arif Ali, 35, and his brother Mohammad Farman Ali, 30.

The pair, from the small town of Darya Khan in the country's interior, had previously served two years in jail for cannibalism and were only released last year.

At the time, local police said the two men had dug up more than 100 corpses from the local graveyard and eaten them.

Arif and Farman have now been rearrested as an investigation gets underway in to the grim discovery at his house.

District police chief, Ameer Abdullah, said officers swooped after residents complained of a bad smell coming from the brothers' home.

'Residents informed police after a stench emanated from the house of the two brothers,' he said.

Abdullah added: 'We raided the house on Monday morning and found the head of a young boy.

'We have arrested one of the brothers, Mohammad Arif, and are conducting raids for the arrest of the other brother.'

Police were searching nearby graveyards to see if they had been disturbed, he said.

The pair were initially jailed after police found that the corpse of a 24-year-old woman had disappeared from its grave in 2011.

Further investigations led officers to the brothers' house where they found a cooking pot containing meat curry.

The brothers were later arrested by police and jailed for two years.

They had once both been married with children, but their wives are said to have left them ahead of being detained by police three years ago.

  

Man arrested for CANNIBALISM after head of three-year-old boy is found in his home

Police are now searching for the suspect's brother after neighbours revealed they have both been convicted of cannibalism before

By John Kelly - Mirror.co.uk

April 14, 2014

Police have arrested a known cannibal after the head of a three-year-old boy was found in his house.

The shocking discovery was made after neighbours complained about the stink of rotting flesh.

Mohammad Arif Ali has allegedly admitted to the crime just a year after being freed from prison for an earlier act of cannibalism.

He and his brother Farman were jailed for two years in Pakistan for stealing the body of a dead woman from her grave in 2011.

They admitted chopping off her lower limbs and making them into meat curry at their home in Darya Khan.

They were sentenced under the law of desecration of the grave because Pakistan had no law relating to cannibalism.

Police are now trying to find Farman to question him about the latest find.

District police chief Ameer Abdullah said: "Residents informed police after a stench emanated from the house of the two brothers."

A year ago another police official, Fakhar Bhatti, told the BBC of his horror at discovering the corpse of the woman in the home that led to their first conviction.

He told of a trail of ants leading to 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."

  

Macabre meeting with Pakistan cannibal

By M Ilyas Khan - BBC News, Darya Khan, Punjab

August 2, 2013

Tracking down the two brothers convicted following a notorious act of cannibalism in Pakistan is no easy task - the duo are keeping a low profile after being released from prison.

We began by following an oxcart-rutted dirt track for as far as it would go in Punjab province. Then we walk another kilometre or so through humid maize and sugarcane plantations to reach the farmhouse.

The brothers are not there, their uncle, Wali Deen, tells me. He is also not happy to see me.

"Interview the corpse-eaters? They didn't eat corpses. They are just the victims of their neighbours' jealousy," he says defiantly.

Mohammad Farman Ali and Mohammad Arif Ali were sentenced to two years in jail for stealing a corpse from a grave and using it to make meat curry.

Because they killed no one and there is no law relating to cannibalism in Pakistan, the pair only served about two years in jail for desecrating a grave following their arrest in April 2011.

The overwhelming evidence of cannibalism created a serious law and order situation in the area around the small desert town of Darya Khan, located along the western fringes of Punjab, some 200km (124 miles) south of the capital, Islamabad.

In June, people of the town were stunned when the brothers were released from jail. Angry protesters set tyres on fire on a major highway in the area, blocking traffic for several hours.

The police had to take the brothers into protective custody to prevent them from being lynched. Their whereabouts since their release have been largely unknown.

Room of horror

We decide to search another of the family's abodes - an abandoned house in a semi-urban locality near to Darya Khan town.

It is here we find the younger brother, Arif Ali, lying in a charpoy cot under a thatched shed in one corner of the courtyard.

Breaking into a cold sweat at being discovered, he has few answers for the atrocity he committed and appears to be more concerned for his own safety.

"It happens you know, that [people get killed]," he tries to explain in an unsteady tone, "so [I am afraid] I could get in trouble."

In fact Mr Ali, who is in his early 30s, does not have a coherent answer to a single question I put to him. I can't decide whether he is mentally unstable, or just nervous. He does express hope, though, that such a grisly incident "will not happen again".

"Everything will be alright… God willing," he says, as if to comfort himself.

But the state of the house does not suggest this hope will be fulfilled. It is strewn with dried branches and debris from crumbling walls.

One end of the courtyard comprises a storeroom and two rooms. Another room is locked and another contains only two pieces of furniture - an aging rope-woven charpoy on which some clothing is dumped, and a steel framed swinging crib for babies.

This is Arif Ali's room. He once lived here with his wife and a baby boy.

It turns out that the next room, which is locked, is where the horror unfolded two years ago.

Stale smell

It all started after a 24-year-old woman, Saira Parveen, died of throat cancer and was buried by her relatives. The next morning, some women of the family visited her grave and found that it had caved in.

"We opened the grave, and were horrified to discover that the body had gone. We called the local elders, who called the police," says Aijaz Hussain, the dead woman's brother.

Police investigations led them to the house of the Ali brothers.

"We raided the house in mid-morning in the presence of local elders," says Inspector Fakhar Bhatti, the police official who led the raid.

"Arif was sleeping in his room. His father and one of his sisters were there. Farman was absent. We searched the house, and then asked for the key to Farman's room, which was locked."

When they opened the room, a stale smell of cooking and dead flesh hit them.

"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."

The food had attracted a colony of ants; their line vanished under a bed.

"We followed the ants. There were a couple of sacks of fertiliser under the bed. We pulled them out, and behind them, inside a gunny bag, we found the body," says Inspector Bhatti.

"It still gives me the creeps; they had chopped off one of her legs below the knee, and the other one near the shin. The rest of the body was intact. The curry was made from those parts. We got it analysed at a laboratory in Multan."

When questioned by the police, the brothers admitted to having dug up and devoured several other dead bodies from the local graveyard. They said they had been doing it for a couple of years.

'Sorcerer'

The question is, how did they get into such a macabre business?

Inspector Bhatti says the police came across leads that the Ali brothers had been in touch with a man accused of being a sorcerer who locals caught stealing a body from a grave some years earlier.

"We couldn't follow up on that lead because the man disappeared without a trace," he says.

During interrogation, Farman Ali admitted that he had written "certain verses of the Koran in reverse as a way of casting a spell on his neighbours", said Inspector Bhatti.

"He said for the spell to be effective, the brothers had to remain unclean and eat human flesh."

Farman Ali was not always like this, says Tanvir Khwawar, a local resident who studied with him in the same school for 10 years.

"He was intelligent, and studied science in the 10th grade, whereas I was just an ordinary student who went for humanities.

"But after the 10th grade, he gave up studies, and became increasingly secluded. We seldom saw each other after that."

Both brothers got married and had children. But their wives left them a couple of years prior to their arrests.

Inspector Bhatti, who traced both women and questioned them, says they complained that their husbands did not work, beat them and locked them up in the house when they went out, often at odd hours.

A sister who lived with them was mentally disabled and was found drowned in a canal a few days after their arrest.

The brothers were never examined by a psychiatrist for any personality disorder.

Defence lawyer Rao Tasadduq Hussain said his job was only to secure a minimum jail term for them, which he did successfully.

"They are not insane, they are just fools," he told me.

  

Pakistani duo are accused of cannibalism

By Azizullah Khan - BBC Urdu, Peshawar

April 6, 2011

A court in eastern Pakistan has extended the police custody of two brothers charged with cannibalism, officials say.

Arif Ali and Farman Ali were arrested earlier in the week. Police say they caught them making a meal of a corpse they had recently stolen from a grave.

The brothers' alleged cannibalism was discovered after the body of a newly deceased woman was found to be missing from her grave in the city of Sargodha.

Her family then alerted the police.

"We have charged them under the anti-terrorism act," Inspector Abdur Rahman of Darya Khan police told the BBC.

"They have been produced in court in Sargodha today."

Both brothers are small scale landowners in the town of Darya Khan, located on the border of the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

'No clear reason'

The family of the woman said to have been eaten became suspicious when they visited her grave a few days after she had been buried to find that it had been disturbed.

After digging to check the body was still there, they found it to be missing.

A police complaint was lodged - and the subsequent investigation led to the house of the brothers.

"They had cut a part of the corpse and were cooking it when we appeared on the scene," a police official said.

The other remains of the 24-year-old, who died of cancer, were recovered from the brothers' residence.

Police have not revealed any clear reason as to why the men are said to have resorted to cannibalism.

They say the pair appear to be in sound physical and mental condition and were living in seclusion with their sister, whose mental condition is said to be unstable.

The brothers have also allegedly admitted eating local dogs before turning to human meat.

Neighbours have expressed shock at the discovery, saying they never suspected that the two men could be involved in such acts.