By Richard Hamilton BBC, Antananarivo

Dozens of people are expected to stand trial in a court in Madagascar later in August for trafficking human bones, authorities have said.

Robbers are said to take female bones from ancestral tombs

Nearly 1,000 ancestral tombs have been raided over a period of a decade in a region to the east of the island, along the shores of Lake Alaotra.

Fifty-five people have already been given life sentences for their part in the trade.

I have been told that there are about 100 inmates being held a prison at the main square in Ambatondrazaka, the biggest town in the Lac Alaotra region, northeast of the capital.

Scared

Here people are scared to talk in public about the terrible goings on over the last decade.

A woman, whose parents' tomb had been robbed, only agreed to be interviewed if she was not identified.

"It saddens and disgusts me because when we bury one of our family, someone must be there to watch because they seem to know the secret combination to open the tombs.

"The robbers never take a body that has just been buried but only old ones and then always female bones," she said.

'Mix up'

The tomb robbers take pieces from the neck, chest and arms and mix up all the remaining bones, so you cannot tell who is who anymore, the woman told me.

"It's as if they were the bodies of dogs not humans," she said.

About 100 people await trial in a prison along the shores of Lake Alaotra

Although Nicole and Hery, work at a local radio station, they too were reluctant to talk about the bones after receiving death threats for discussing this taboo subject on air.

"There are people here who say that these bones are used to make medicine that is exported abroad to cure people who are suffering from Aids and there are others who say they are used to make atomic bombs.

"But these are rumours and no one really knows what they are used for," Hery told me.

Rich in calcium

He said that the bones from this region are believed to be rich in calcium, because of the diet of fish from the lake, so it's thought that may fuel the demand for the medicine.

But his friend Nicole thinks that the scandal of the bones is being used as a smokescreen to hide more lucrative illegal businesses.

"People are actually trafficking precious stones, like rubies and smuggling them out of Madagascar - but because everyone is talking about the bones all the time, it is distracting their attention from the real issue.

A local official from the region, Adrien Raoeloson, who has started a support group for the victims of the grave robbing, told me that 'collectors' will pay as much as $4,000 for a kilogram of bones.

He thinks that members of Madagascar's former regime may have been behind the trafficking.

Destabilization

"It's an act of a mafia - a war of honour designed to demoralise the Malagasy people.

"There are people from other countries who want to destabilize our country and impose another culture over here for their own ends," he told me.

Mr Raoeloson said that there are also certain political figures from the last government, who are involved that is why this scourge has persisted until now.

I was refused permission to go inside to speak to any of them - so it is possible we may never really know what the reason for the trafficking of bones was.