There have been around two dozens reported cases in which corpses were stolen or women murdered in order to sell their bodies as "ghost brides" in recent years, mostly in northern provinces, news portal thepaper.cn reported Monday.
In the 23 reported cases, a total of 44 corpses were sold for "ghost marriages" between 2009 and 2015 - 20 in North China's Shanxi Province and 15 in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Beside the crime of stealing a corpse, these incidents also involved murder, racketeering and fraud, according to the report.
A ghost marriage is a custom in which a marriage is conducted when one or more partners are already deceased, for a variety of reasons depending on local beliefs.
According to northern Shaanxi custom, an unmarried woman should not be buried near her home and a bachelor cannot be interred in his family tomb. A ghost marriage would allow both of them to be buried, said thepaper.cn.
Bodies of women can each be sold for up to 10,000 yuan ($1,499), thepaper.com quoted courts' verdicts as saying.
In April, Ma Chonghua from Northwest China's Gansu Province and his accomplices abducted and killed two disabled women and sold their corpses for more than 40,000 yuan to a village in Shaanxi.
The Shanxi Evening Newspaper also reported in 2013 on gangs that killed people to sell their bodies, and argued that the custom hadn't disappeared as society develops, but rather grown along with the economy.
Peng Xinlin, a law professor at Beijing Normal University, said that as there are no current law laying out criminal sanctions for corpse selling and buying, it is difficult to stamp out ghost marriages, thepaper.cn reported.
