GROVER Macuchapi is behind bars in Bolivia after being arrested for necrophilia.

The 27-year-old was taken into custody at the Hospital de Clinicas in La Paz after the husband of a just-deceased woman walked in on the scene at the hospital’s morgue.

The grieving 28-year-old had left her side momentarily about midnight on Monday to address some hospital bills and paperwork.

Local media reports he returned to find the nurse assistant standing over his wife’s body with his pants around his ankles.

“I saw what he was doing and hit him,” the husband said. “He was moving and he had his trousers down.”

Bolivian police Douglas Uzquiano said in a statement: “At the time, the deceased had been transferred to the morgue. The husband returns and finds that this man of 27 years was engaging in relations with the corpse of his wife.

“The nursing assistant was committing the crime of necrophilia ... so he (the husband) beat him until the uniformed security arrived.”

Macuchapi, who had been employed at the hospital only six months, has reportedly attempted to excuse his behaviour.

He says he cannot fully remember or understand what had happened.

“I do not know, something has happened in my head,” he told local media.

“Something happened ... It was like a trance. The next thing I remember was feeling a blow from behind when the woman’s husband hit me.”

He is yet to be formally charged, with police seeking to determine the most serious possible crime he may have breached to maximise his penalty. Bolivian law has no criminal penalty for necrophilia.

Instead, he may be charged with ‘profaning a corpse’ and ‘obscene acts’.

The identities of the husband and the dead woman have not been released. She reportedly died from complications resulting from a lung disease.