Culprits believed to have been targeting valuables such as gold and jade bangles
DANNY.MOK@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Monday, 28 March, 2016, 10:29am
Investigators in both cases believe the graves were dug up days ago. No arrests have been made. Photo: Sam Tsang
Tomb sweepers in Fanling and Yuen Long were left in disbelief when they realised their ancestors’ burial sites had been dug up by suspected grave robbers.
On Sunday, a 60-year-old villager observing the Ching Ming tradition of honouring one’s ancestors called the police when he saw three tombs in a graveyard near Hang Tau, Fanling, had been dug up.
Some coffins were exposed, and the gravestones had been vandalised.
Officers confirmed there were four graves involved.
The families are trying to find out what valuables, if any, were stolen.
The incident has been classified as a criminal damage case, and the Tai Po district investigation team is working on it.
In an earlier incident on Saturday, four graves in a graveyard at Mai Po off San Tam Road, Yuen Long, were found dug up.
Visitors from the nearby Mai Po village, some having returned from the Netherlands, called the police when they came across a similar chaotic scene.
They said gold and jade bangles were among the funerary objects placed in the tombs and believed those were the reason those graves had been targeted.
The value of the objects stolen is not yet known.
Investigators in both cases believe the graves were dug up days ago. No arrests have been made.
Ching Ming festival falls on April 4 this year.
In October, 12 tombs at a burial ground on a hillside in Wong Yi Au, Tai Po were found to have been dug up, with some valuable personal effects said to have gone missing, presumably snatched by grave robbers.
The alleged thefts took place before Chung Yeung, a festival that fell on October 21 last year, during which families sweep the graves of their ancestors and venerate them.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1931228/coffins-dug-and-left-exposed-suspected-tomb-raiders-leave
