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INDIA
Ban on human-skeleton export
NEW DELHI, Saturday (Reuter).
— India has banned exports of hu-
man skeletons which earn the country
millions of dollars a year but have led
to accusations of body snatching.
During an emotional debate yester-
day in Parliament's Lower House on
the macabre trade, a Government
Member said that one trader had
exported the skeletons of 15,000
children during the past few years.
The Finance Minister, Mr Vis-
hwanath Pratap Singh, said at the end
of the debate that the Government
had decided to reimpose a ban on
exports of human skeletons and skulls
by 13 licensed firms, all based in
Calcutta.
Mr Singh said that the former
Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, first
imposed the ban in 1967. It was later
lifted by the Janata Party Govern-
ment, which was in power from
1975-77.
Ruling Congress (I) member Mr
Kali Prasad Pandey said about 50,000
skeletons were exported each year
from the poor and heavily populated
eastern States of Bihar and West
Bengal.
He said police arrested a skeleton
trader in Bihar's capital of Patna in
March on a charge of smuggling out
15,000 skeletons of children.
India is the world's largest exporter
of skeletons and the trade earns up to
SUSS million (SA 7.13 million) a
year, according to Customs figures.
They are bought mostly for medical
research.
But the business has run into con-
troversy after Indian newspaper re-
ports that poor Hindus who have no
money to buy wood to burn their
dead are persuaded to hand over the
bodies to traders.
Newspapers said that slightly burnt
bodies were sometimes stolen from
cremation grounds.
Dealer said that skeletons which
were not damaged through burial or
cremation brought the highest prices.
Traders have denied charges of
body snatching, saying they only buy
unclaimed bodies from police and
hospital morgues.
Others were fished out of rivers
where corpses arc found floating after
being immersed by relatives accord-
ing to religious rites.
A small community called
"doams", traditionally assigned un-
der the Hindu caste system to or-
ganise funerals at the cremation
grounds, dissects and strips a corpse
of its flesh, traders said.
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