Bhutanese monasteries demand human bones

New Delhi, June 20:  Indian police have discovered hundreds of human skulls and femurs and arrested a gang for smuggling bones to Bhutan for use in Buddhist monasteries.

According to Indian media reports, the smugglers during the interrogation 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.

This is the second time police discovered bone smugglers 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.

Latest collection was found in Jaigaon. Four people have been arrested who said they were smuggling them across the border.

In April, police six people involved in trading of skeletons.

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. Bhutan News Service