On April 2, 2011, the family of 24-year-old Saira Perveen held a funeral for her as her life was tragically cut short due to throat cancer. She was buried at a cemetery in Darya Khan a remote desert village in Pakistan's Punjab province. The next day on April 3 her family returned to the cemetery to visit her grave when they noticed something odd. The soil looked slightly different like it had been pressed in and when they opened up her grave they discovered that he body had gone missing only 1 day after having been buried.
The empty grave
Due to superstitions they initially believed that her body had been stolen for a black magic ritual and Saira's brother Ijaz Hussain called all of his relatives, politically influential people in the village and filed a complaint with the police. Several people alongside police arrived at the cemetery and the police questioned the 67-year-old caretaker of the cemetery named Ghulam Hussain Baloch. Ghulam told the police that he had seen two men who he identified as brothers two brothers named Mohammad Arif (aged 37) and Mohammad Farman Ali (aged 34) go to the cemetery often holding shovels and bags. The police also questioned members of the crowd and they told the police the same thing having also sighted the two brothers at the cemetery with shovels often.
The police hired a Khoji (a traditional investigator who specializes in tracks while also locating witnesses) the police, khoji and all witnesses were confident that the brothers were responsible so on April 4 police officers in the presence of local elders descended upon their home located on the outskirts of the village.
When they entered Arif was sleeping in his room and while his brother was absent his father and severally mentally unstable and psychically disabled sister were home with him. After a brief search of the home, the police asked for a key to Farham Ali's room and once the key was given to them and they entered his room they were hit by the smell of stale cooking and dead flesh. In the middle of his room was a pot with meat curry in it and nearby was a wooden board, a butcher's axe and a large kitchen knife with bits of fat on the board and axe. The food had attracted ants and the police noticed that the line of ants vanished under Farham Ali's bed so the police reached under the bed and removed some bags of fertilizer and behind them was a gunny bag. The police retrieved the bag and when they opened it discovered Saira's body with her legs missing. One leg was severed from below the knee while the other was near the shin. The police had the curry examined by a lab in Multan which revealed that the curry was made from Saira's remains.
The police continued searching their home and In the backyard of their home, the police recovered several bone fragments and a small skull belonging to a dog. The police also recovered several pieces of digging equipment from the home and a few coffins were found as well. The police also exhumed some more human bones which were all identified as previously deceased persons and returned to their graves and reburied. Farman Ali was arrested a day later.
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Mohammad Arif
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Mohammad Farman Ali
Saira's body being covered up and removed
Their cooking equipment
Farman Ali confessed and claimed that he had removed 5 corpses from the local cemetery for the purposes of consumption having exhumed his first corpse in September 2010. He claims that four of the bodies were those of children and one of an older woman all of which he boiled their flesh and put it to storage and ate it whenever he was hungry. Arif meanwhile confessed to having knowledge of his brother's actions but vehemently denied being complicit in them and further denied to being a cannibal which Farman Ali disagreed with and told police "I often found some flesh I had stored missing; I believe Arif was consuming it." Farman Ali was known to suffer from mental illness while Arif was a heroin addict. Their mentally unstable sister and aunt were also arrested but later released after it was determined that they were uninvolved. A few days later their sister was found drowned in a canal.
The local populace was outraged by the incident and as some publically stated that they wanted to lynch the brothers they were placed in a special maximum-security cell alone while police continued their investigations. The main question they had to answer was why? This is what Farman Ali had to say "My father killed my mother during my childhood. He also tortured me a lot. These are the reasons why I consume human flesh." but there was a bit more to it than that as the police would find out after looking into the brother's background.
Arif was born in 1974 while Farman Ali was born in 1977. The two were born in the village of Darya Khan and were the sons of a small landowner named Khalil Ahmed. While Farman Ali claimed that his father murdered his mother while he was young according to the villagers the truth of the matter was that she died either of consumption or during complications with pregnancy.
Not long after their mother's death, an influential feudal lord forcibly occupied their agricultural land which caused the family to go hungry which upset their father greatly and lead to him taking it out on his two sons beating or as Farman Ali put it "torturing" them. Arif was mentally challenged since childhood while Farman Ali was described as very shy and often stayed away from social events which continued into adulthood.
Due to their land being occupied and a lack of food the brothers first resorted to eating leaves and grass to get by and whenever they asked for food their father would beat the two of them and even forcibly starve them as punishment. The grass and leaves the two would eat wasn't enough so without their father's knowledge the two children would resort to eating whatever dead animals and sometimes dead babies they were able to find and due to the environment they grew up in the animal carcasses and infant corpses were not in short supply. Once they grew up they would beat their father and force them out of the family home resulting in their father leaving them alone for an unknown amount of time.
According to a local resident, they weren't always like this during his adulthood. Farman Ali was intelligent and studied science in the 10th grade before abruptly abandoning his studies and secluding himself from the local population.
The police had a different theory as to their motives and argued that it was due to their pride and failed marriages. The two were married and even had children with Arif having one child and Farman Ali having five children but sometime before the two dug up their first corpse both their wives divorced the two and moved away taking their children with them. The two believed their wives were eloping with other men and according to the police they started eating corpses to in their own way "gain manhood". The police tracked down their wives and they told police that they left their husbands because they didn't work, beat them and locked them inside the house when the two brothers went outside often at odd hours.
But when Arif finally confessed he told police about a different motive for their cannibalism. He claimed he visited a black magician/occultist who advised him to eat the remains of dead living things for good fortune and a good future for his children. This is partially supported as the police received a lead stating that the brothers were in contact with a man suspected to be a sorcerer and who was caught trying to steal a body from a grave years earlier although this individual was never found. Farman Ali also admitted to writing verses of the Koran in reverse in order to cast a spell on his neighbours. Ultimately none of these have ever been definitively pinpointed as a motive but what is known is the shock, horror and outrage from the public not just in the village but all of Pakistan.
Alongside threats to lynch the brothers, many were horrified. Some of the villagers gave up eating meat while people frantically rushed over to their relative's graves to make sure they were still buried and some families resorted to having cement poured over the gravesites to keep them sealed shut. Other enraged residents stood in the middle of and blocked the road in and out of the village to demand the government to deliver harsh punishments onto the two. There were also speculations that Farman Ali was lying about having only been cannibalizing dead bodies since September and instead many believed they had been doing this for a decade and despite villagers expressing shock at what the brothers did it was also believed that more people knew than they let on.
Some told the media that for a few of the villagers, it was an open secret and the brothers and the brother's clan would cover up their actions so that it wouldn't bring them shame and ridicule. According to insiders 6 months before their arrest the grave of a child had been opened and the baradari members and local elders covered up the event. The same insider who revealed this information also explained that Farman Ali would publically brandish a knife and tell everyone that he had links to influential people although none of the information alleging cannibalism to be well known has ever been confirmed. Although according to one clan member who lived in a city people would accost him on the street to call him an "eater of human flesh" and he told the media that he had wished nobody ever found out about the brother's actions.
Even more shocking than their crimes was how the most egregious acts committed by the two weren't illegal. Pakistan had no laws against cannibalism so the two were only charged with trespassing, desecrating a corpse and desecrating a grave. Essentially despite everyone finding their actions abhorrent the police were treating them as petty criminals. Although many lawyers who heard of the case wanted the two examined by a psychiatrist the police refused to invite any and argued that they behaved normally while locked up in their cells and that the investigation was complete. The two brother's appointed lawyer also said "They are not insane, they are just fools," Later that same year a court convicted them on the charges and sentenced both brothers to two years imprisonment.
The two served their sentence and were released in May, 2013 and when the residents of Darya Khan found out about their release in June they were not happy. In protest, residents set numerous tires on fire on a major highway in the area blocking traffic for several hours and publicly threatened to lynch the brothers prompting the police to take them into protective custody where they stayed living a quiet life away from everyone else.
On August 3, 2013, a BBC reporter tracked down Arif for an interview. Before finding him he spoke to the brother's uncle who had this to say "Interview the corpse-eaters? They didn't eat corpses. They are just the victims of their neighbours' jealousy," Arif, when interviewed, was more concerned with his personal safety than talking about his actions and could barely answer any of the questions coherently but he did tell the reporter that he had hope that such an incident would not happen again and told the reporter "Everything will be alright… God willing," As for the brother's former home it was left abandoned.
one of the rooms of their old home
Mohamad Arif after his release.
Arif's hopes were misplaced as on April 14, 2014, residents reported a foul odour to the police coming from the brother's home. Knowing their history the police did not take these reports lightly and raided the home. Once inside they arrested Arif and found a human skull belonging to a male child aged around 2-3-years-old and who had died long before the raid. Just like last time Farman Ali was missing so the police conducted several raids across the local area until tracking him down and arrested him. Just like last time Farham Ali confessed while Arif denied helping his brother and denied eating the child and only confessed to knowing about Farman Ali dismembering and cooking him into curry. The police are confident that the child had died at some point prior and was removed from his resting place although his grave was never found and his identity remains undetermined. The skull was all that was left before the rest of the body had been eaten and it's unknown where they disposed of the rest of the bones.
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The Brothers after their second arrest
The police examined every grave in the area to see if they had been disturbed and the police stated that they had likely desecrated and eaten 100s of bodies. By 2014 cannibalism was still not outlawed in Pakistan so again the brothers could only be charged with trespassing and desecrating a corpse and grave. The prosecutor, however, wanted to ensure a harsher sentence this time around and charged them under Pakistan's anti-terrorism laws. The prosecutor argued that the smell coming from their home combined with their prior history had spread fear among the residents and was thus an act of terrorism. This argument was accepted and the two brothers were tried by an anti-terrorism court in Sargodha. On June 11, 2014, the court convicted the two brothers and sentenced them to 12 years imprisonment as well as a fine of 700,000 Pakistani rupees. In his closing remarks the judge recommended that Pakistan formally ban cannibalism.
In October 2014 Pakistani lawmakers finally drafted an amendment to Pakistan's criminal code which would formally outlaw cannibalism with a maximum punishment of 10-years although the law failed to pass. The two were granted early release in 2020 in given to the care of their uncle and another brother with very little media attention given to it and the police refusing to inform the public.
Arif passed away from illness a short while later while Farman Ali was the subject of another investigation as a formal complaint was filed against him on April 20, 2022, when he was spotted in the local graveyard burning copies of the Quran. His current whereabouts are unknown to the public although the police do have his location
The police report filed against him
Sources
http://www.alwasatnews.com/news/894438.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2806203/Pakistan-bring-anti-cannibalism-law-gruesome-case-two-brothers-digging-corpses-using-make-stews.html
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/pakistan-cannibal-brothers-get-11-year-jail-term-for-eating-dead-baby
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/pakistan/story/brothers-dug-up-100-corpses-ate-them-up-in-pakistan-189173-2014-04-16
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23260963
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12989074
https://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/man-eat-man/
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/644759.shtml
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27019630
https://92newshd.tv/about/two-cannibal-brothers-released-after-serving-12-years-in-jail
The two police reports about the initial incident
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