LAHORE: Police said Monday they had arrested two middle-aged brothers on suspicion of stealing and eating human flesh in an investigation into cannibalism that has shocked a remote town.



"We arrested the two men from Kohar Kalan village on Sunday after it was revealed they had been stealing bodies from graves and eating them," local police officer Abdul Rehman told AFP.



He said police acted after the parents of a 24-year-old woman, who died of cancer, complained that her body went missing after being buried on Saturday.



Rehman said the suspects, both in their 40s, stole the body from the grave near the town of Darya Khan, in Punjab.



"The two men, who are brothers, confessed to police that they had been pulling out bodies for the past year.



"We also recovered the body of the girl with a missing leg, which the two men said was eaten by them," the official said.



District police officer Humayun Masood Sindhu also confirmed the arrests and called the case "the most horrible" of his entire career.



He said police found the body of the 24-year-old woman in a sack and confiscated an axe from the house where the suspects were living.