The police on Tuesday recovered five human skulls from a garbage dump yard in Tigiria block of Odisha’s Cuttack district.
The skulls have been sent for scientific examination, a police officer said.
“Preliminary examinations reveal that the skulls appear to be very old and cracked. All the skulls were lying in an open garbage dump yard near a spinning mill of Nuapatna, which has been shut for over a decade now,” said Tigiria police inspector Sushant Satpathy.
Police claim that the skulls could have been either used by medical students for academic purpose or by tantriks (black magicians) for practising witchcraft.
“We have sent the skulls for forensic examination. Only after getting the scientific report, we will come to any conclusion,” Satpathy said.
Police, however, ruled out of any practice of human sacrifices related to the recovery of the skulls from the dump yard.
“We have no such reports in recent memory coming from any of the nearby areas about any mass human sacrifices”, said a senior police officer of the district.