Photos: Pile of rotten dead bodies discovered locked away in a police station yesterday

Indian officers are investigating a pile of rotten human skeletons that were discovered locked away in a police station.

Piles of dead bodies were found in a locked room at a police station in Unnao in Uttar Pradesh, India, yesterday. 

Police said the skeletons, which were gathered over a decade, had been used in criminal investigations.

In India, bodies are traditionally cremated, with some exceptions, usually within a day of the death.

This is due to Hindu concepts of a detachment of the soul from the body at the time of death.

Earlier this month, more than 100 corpses, many of them children, were found washed up in a shallow tributary of the River Ganges.

Officials believed the dead had been given water burials. It is Indian custom not to cremate unwed girls, and many poor people cannot afford cremation.

But the discovery sparked renewed concerns about the health of the Ganges, a sacred river where millions of Hindus cremate their dead.