Pakistani wanted for trying to revive father's corpse

KARACHI, Mar 3 (Reuters) Pakistani police are hunting a man who dug up his father's two-year old corpse and took it home in a hijacked ambulance to try to bring him back to life.

Abdul Rehman's family say he is mentally ill and has never been able to cope with his father's death, police said today.

''He dug up the corpse on Thursday night after he had hijacked an ambulance and its driver at gunpoint and took it to his home,'' Ghulam Murtaza, a duty officer at Ferozabad police station in the southern city of Karachi, told Reuters.

Police raided the house yesterday after a complaint from the trust that owned the ambulance and from Rehman's brother.

''He kept the corpse, which was nothing but a skeleton in his bedroom, for well over 12 hours. He escaped when we raided the house. We have buried it again,'' Murtaza said.

Rehman had also kidnapped a vagabond who slept in the graveyard and locked him up at home, police said.

''He told us he saw Rehman chanting magic spells and pouring rose water on the corpse to bring it back to life and was crying bitterly,'' Murtaza said.

Rehman faces a year in jail for defiling a corpse, police said.

REUTERS SP RN1416