[UA] Human bone smuggling racket uncovered

[Bastien Pilon]

I have a whole new respect for Buddhists now. I mean come on, human
thigh bone blow-horns? Badass.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/070619/odds/odd_india_bones_dc

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Indian police have discovered a stash of
hundreds of human skulls and thigh bones and arrested a gang for
allegedly smuggling them to the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan for use in
Buddhist monasteries.

"During interrogation they confessed that the hollow human thigh bones
were in great demand in monasteries and were used as blow-horns, and
the skulls as vessels to drink from at religious ceremonies,"
investigating officer Ravinder Nalwa said Tuesday.

It was the second cache of bones found in eastern India since April
and police now believe the region could be the center of a much
broader trade in human bones. They suspect some bones may even have
ended up as far away as Thailand and Japan.

Officers found the latest collection in Jaigaon, a town in eastern
India on the border with Bhutan, and arrested four people who said
they were smuggling them across the border, Nalwa told Reuters by
telephone from the northeastern town of Siliguri.

In April, police discovered what they called a "human bones factory"
in the state, and arrested six people for illegally trading in
skeletons. The bones were apparently being sold to medical students
and for use in traditional medicine.

Both caches of bones appear to have originated in Varanasi, a Hindu
holy city in northern India where millions of people are cremated
every year on the banks of the Ganges.

"The skeletons seized in Jaigaon had all come from Varanasi's
cremation centers and all these years we thought they were just going
secretly to medical students," Nalwa said.

Eastern India was once a thriving center for the export of human
skeletons, which were sent as far as western Europe, former traders in
Kolkata said.

But the federal government banned the exports in the late 1980s after
human rights groups raised questions about how the bones were being
collected, forcing the trade underground.

Mukti Biswas, an arrested villager in another district of West Bengal
state, told police that he had plucked bodies from the river, as well
as collecting those left behind at Hindu cremation centers by poor
people who lacked the wood to perform a proper cremation.

Biswas said he had supplied the bones to medical students.

Bhutanese authorities said they were awaiting more details from Indian
police before investigating further but said they doubted if all the
bones were destined for their country.

"We have never come across such large-scale cases before, maybe one or
two," Ninda Wangdi, a senior Bhutanese police officer, told Reuters by
telephone.

Buddhist monks in India said human thigh bones and skulls were used by
followers of a Tibetan school of Buddhism.

"But one or two bones would last a lifetime, so a racket this huge
might have links to other countries," said Bhikkhu Bodhipala, chief
priest of the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya.

-- 
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the
forces of evil...prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom,
no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat
leaden death, demon...
 - Terry Pratchett

Archeologists unearthed an old english dictionary dating back to the
year 1236. It defined "victim" as "one who has encountered Chuck
Norris".