Four cannibals, reached a graveyard at a dark night, dug out a newly buried dead body of a girl, took her to their home, cut her one leg into pieces. When they were doing the cooking in a remote Pakistan village, police raided the house and arrested them.

Rana Farman, 40, his younger brother Rana Arif, 37, along with their one sister and aunt are now in jail and facing court trial for stealing and eating human dead bodies in Bhakkar district of country's eastern Punjab province.

This was not their first attempt, Police said, they confessed to having eaten five corpses stolen from the nearby graveyard during last one year on the outskirts of the village Daraya Khan, some 300 kilometers south of the capital Islamabad.

On April 3, Police took serious action after the complaint by Ijaz Hussain, the brother of Saira Perveen whose newly buried body was missing from the grave.

On finding reports about suspicious activities by these two brothers in the graveyard police raided their house and found the girl's dead body with one leg missing.

The incident panicked the residents of the area who later protested at road and asked the government to sentence the culprits.

District police officer Humayun Masood, terming it a terrible case of his career, said that these two brothers had been pulling out of bodies from graves for one year but some locals feared for one decade.

Their cousin Rana Tasawar from Multan city, talking to Xinhua, said that a disturbed childhood and lack of attention from the father might have led to the mental disorder of these two.

"Their mother died when they were children, an influential feudal lord occupied their agricultural land, hunger prevailed in their home and the upset father started torturing them. These were the tragedies that led the poor family to eat dead bodies," Tasawar said.

After becoming young and powerful men they started to take revenge on the society and in the first step, they beat up their father and kicked him out of his own house.

The local people were totally unaware of their activities as they rarely met and even their strange look frightened the children.

According to Tasawar, Arif was mentally challenged since his childhood while Farman was a shy person which kept him away from social gatherings. Due to the lack of food they used to eat leaves and grass, he said.

Both brothers told police that whenever they asked for food their father beat them in childhood and finally hunger forced them to eat dead animals and even they ate their own dead babies.

But an investigating police officer narrated another story that actually the failed marriages of the two brothers drove them towards the eating of human body "to gain manhood" because their wives eloped with other men leveling charges of torture and sexual inability.

Arif, changing versions, also reasoned this filthy act saying that he was worried over his new born dead babies and a black magician advised him to eat dead things for healthy children.

Dr. Naushad Sheikh told Xinhua that when such habit or taste is developed in a person then he wants to eat dead things at any cost and the disease may inherits to the lower family members also.

A sense of fear among the Pakistani people was visible especially some unknown fear is stilling ruling over the residents of the said village.

The village people whose dear ones died during last one decade feared that these two brothers might have eaten their buried relatives.

"We don't know how many graves are empty, because they ( cannibals) told the police that they have been doing this for many years," said a resident of the village, while talking to a local Urdu TV.

This was the first time the cannibals left the grave unfilled otherwise they always filled the big hole after stealing the dead body, police said.

"It's very dirty and terror act," said Sadia Masood, a lady reporter in Islamabad, adding, "I am very scared with the thought of eating human flesh."

Some people want the government to arrange culprits' psychological treatment but majority of the Pakistanis wish an exemplary punishment.

What the court will announce for them is still unclear under the reality of that there is no clear law about cannibals in the country. The court is proceeding against them on terror and some other charges which, lawyers said, may punish them for over 10 years imprisonment.