Police have uncovered a human skull that someone tried to smuggle from Bali to Australia.
The skull was found in a package that would be shipped to Canberra from Benoa, Bali and the contents of the package had been wrongly declared as a buffalo skull.
The non-buffalo skull was detected by an X-ray scan—police had apparently been taking more precautions with the Benoa shipping company after a smuggling operation trying to transport 122 baby lobsters out of the country had been thwarted.
Police said a fake address in Seminyak was used to send the package, under the name David, and had been addressed to ‘Brent Counsell’.
“The skull was covered with aluminum foil, then covered by foam and inside the box there was shell handicraft. Maybe to fool the officers so that it can pass through the x-ray,” said Benoa police chief, Nyoman Gatra, as quoted by News Corp Australia.
Gatra said forensic testing shows that the skull was a young, adult male. There was no indication of violence to the skull and the cause of death was not clear. Based on the modus operandi, this could be the work of a professional international smuggling syndicate, he added.
The skull was found back on May 24, but police hadn’t shared their discovery with the public in the hopes of finding the involved parties.
Most intriguingly, Gatra says this isn’t the first time police in Bali have found skulls being sent using fake addresses under this sender name—police have previously investigated 17 similar cases, he said.
The recommendation letter from the Natural Resources Conservation Agency included with the package, claiming to grant permission to send the buffalo skull, is suspected to have been a fake.
