Investigators have found 381 abandoned bodies in a private crematorium in Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, the local prosecutor's office announced on Sunday, blaming the funeral home for negligence.
"381 bodies were improperly left in the crematorium," Eloy Garcia, a spokesman for the attorney general's office in Chihuahua state, which includes Ciudad Juarez, told AFP.
According to him, the dead were found “in heaps” without any order in different parts of the building where the crematorium operates. They were “abandoned, indiscriminately, one on top of the other, on the floor,” Mr. Garcia described.
He explained that they had been embalmed and, at least in theory, there was a death certificate for each.
The prosecution's argument for the macabre discovery is that most of the bodies had been transported there for cremation.
But authorities estimate that some of them had been abandoned for more than two years.
Eloy Garcia spoke about the "irresponsibility" of the crematorium owners.
One of his managers has been taken before the prosecutor's office, which wants to bring "criminal charges" against those responsible for the situation, the spokesman said.
Authorities have not clarified whether they were victims of organized crime or not.
Mexico, a country hard hit by gang activity, has faced a crisis in its forensic system for years, due to the overwhelming number of dead bodies to be managed, a lack of qualified personnel and budgetary constraints.