Lahore: A Pakistani man has been arrested on suspicion of cannibalism when the head of a newborn baby was found at his home - three years after he was jailed for the same offence.

Police on Monday raided the house in a remote village in Punjab province after neighbours complained of a foul smell and found the head of the two-day-old baby inside.

Householder Mohammad Arif admitted eating the child after his brother stole the body from a graveyard in Darya Khan village, around 300km south of Islamabad, officers said.

Arif and his brother Farman Ali were arrested for eating human corpses in the same village in April 2011 and served two years in prison, in a case that shocked Pakistan.