A local Chinese official paid grave robbers $484 for 10 stolen corpses to meet cremation quota in towns of Guangdong Province. A second official paid just half of the amount for an unspecified number of dead bodies. Both officials are in trouble for abetting stealing of corpses.

The two, identified only as Dong and He, were arrested last week, reports ABC.

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With China's more than 1 billion headcount which boosted demand for real estate, tracts of land being used as burial grounds are being converted to farms or commercial use, which led to the government pushing for cremation as an alternative form of burial since it requires lesser space.

However, cremation clashes with Chinese tradition of burying the dead in tombs where the relatives could still perform ancient worship practices, according to BBC. It is part of their centuries-old belief that the body of a dead person must remain intact for him or her to have a peaceful afterlife.

To bypass the rules mandating cremation rather than burial, the town folks bury their dead relatives in secret. In the eastern Chinese province of Anhui, reports said that six older residents committed suicide so the new rules which prohibit coffin burials would not apply to them.

In 2012, there was a major public protest over the demolition of 400,000 graves in the province of Henan as part of the government's massive campaign to stop coffin burials and convert the graveyards into farms and commercial or residential areas.

The stealing of corpses as a business became known in June after a man in Beiliu in Guangxi reported that his grandfather's body was missing. To prevent a repeat of the incident, the family guards the tombs of their other deceased relatives.

The grave thief, named Zhong, admitted to stealing over 20 corpses at night and placing the bodies inside bags for transport to Guangdong where he sold them to Dong and He.

Tagsgrave robbers, land, Cremation, Chinese burial practices