Corpse Sellers Arrested in Cremation Murder Trade

Seven members of a Chinese gang in Puning, Guangdong province, have been arrested in connection with the murder of 100 disabled or elderly people whose corpses were sold for cremation to families who wanted to bury their loved ones, the South China Morning Post reported.

Mainland China outlawed the several-thousand-year-old burial tradition in the 1950s and enforced cremation to save on farmland, a move many blame for the rise in the black-market corpse for cremation trade.

Wealthy people who want to respect their loved ones by burying the bodies will buy corpses of murder victims to cremate, replacing their relatives' bodies, a police spokesman told the South China Morning Post. The family will later bury the real body according to traditional customs.

A Puning Public Security Bureau spokesman who declined to give his name told the South China Morning Post that the suspects are being interrogated and the case is still under investigation.

The suspects would reportedly trail victims, usually mentally disabled or elderly, drag them into vehicles in remote areas and either strangle or poison them.

Corpses would be sold for approximately $1,500 each and substituted for cremation.