MULTAN, April 3: Darya Khan police have arrested a man and two women on Sunday on charges of indulging in cannibalism, recovering from their house the amputated body of a woman that was disinterred from a grave at Kahawar Kalan village of Bhakkar district.

The gory matter came to surface when the grave of a 24-year-old woman, Saira Perveen, daughter of Noor Hussain, a resident of Kahawar Kalan village, was found demolished by her brother on Sunday morning, a night after her burial. She had died on Saturday.

On being informed of the incident, the family of the deceased woman dug up her grave to find the body missing. They reported the matter to police.

Darya Khan Sadar police SHO Malik Abdul Rehman reached the graveyard to investigate the issue. The graveyard guard informed the police that he had seen Arif alias Aphal, a local, wandering in the graveyard on Saturday night carrying a hoe.

The police, along with some locals, raided the house of Arif and found him present their along with his sister and an aunt. On opening a locked room after recovering its key from Arif, the police found the body of the woman lying there with one leg up to the knee and a foot amputated.

When the police entered another room, they found the amputated parts of the body being cooked there.

The police have recovered a hoe, a knife and pieces of the woman's shroud from the house, arresting Arif, his sister and his aunt.

The 35-year-old accused, Arif, told the police that his brother Irfan alias Mapha had brought the body after disinterring it from a grave in the village graveyard.

He claimed that his brother was missing since Sunday morning and he was unaware of his whereabouts.

He also told the police that earlier his brother had brought the body of a little girl and they had cooked and eaten her flesh. He said they had also been eating dog's flesh after cooking it.

Some locals later confirmed to the police that the body of a four-year old girl had gone missing from her grave sometime back. However, they said, it was thought that some wild animal had dug it out from the grave.

Expressing her ignorance of the matter, Arif's aunt claimed she had arrived in the village to see the children of her brother on Sunday morning.

Investigation officer Fakharuz Zaman told this correspondent that police had yet to lodge an FIR as the accused was claiming that he was innocent and his brother was the culprit.

The body of the woman was shifted to Darya Khan tehsil headquarters hospital by the police for postmortem.