A bag filled with 54 severed human hands found dumped near a river in Russia was not the work of criminals, according to police.
Officers in the city of Khabarovsk, in far east Siberia, say the hands were taken from unidentified bodies and stored at a nearby forensic laboratory.
The hands were taken to preserve the fingerprints in case the remains needed to be identified at a later date, investigators said.
Locals in Khabarovsk, in far east Siberia, found a bag containing 54 severed human hands on a small island in the middle of a river, close to a popular fishing spot
Many speculated it could be the work of a murderer or criminal gang, but police now say the appendages come from a forensic lab which disposed of them improperly
Police said the bag ended up dumped on a small island in the middle of a river after being disposed of in an ‘inappropriate way’.
Officers are now ‘carrying out checks and studying all the circumstances of this event’, a spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee said.
Russians had previously speculated that a dismembering maniac or an international gang could have been behind the grisly find.
One theory was that the hands were severed from corpses which had been plundered for body parts to hide the identity of victims, the Siberian Times reports.
Another was that it could be the work of the Yakuza, a transnational organised crime syndicate originating in Japan, or a Chinese mafia gang.
The island where the hands were discovered was just 19 miles downstream from the point where the Amur forms the frontier with China.
Others saw the work of a new maniac dismembering his victims.
The hands were discovered close to the Amur River which runs through the city of Khabarovsk
Following the police announcement many reacted with disbelief on social media, with some smelling a cover-up.
Some asked why fingerprints could not be taken and stored on electronic databases rather than preserving entire hands.
Another said: ‘The (human hands) do not have criminal background… ?
‘So there is nothing criminal in the fact that hands were cut off from dead bodies for the purpose of taking fingerprints?’
‘This is plain weird,’ said another.
‘When you buried your friends or relatives, how often did you see that they did not have limbs? Let’s be honest.
‘Why were these limbs amputated and stored in the same place and later utilised in such an odd way?
‘I wonder if this amputation has a purpose to prevent identification of the dead bodies when they are found… it would be strange to find 26-28 dead bodies without hands. This are surely not medical stuff, with only hands were cut off…’
‘Somebody brought the hands here to hide them, not utilise them.’
‘This is how our state bodies treat the remains of Russian citizens…’