Mexican authorities on Monday began exhuming the remains of 116 unidentified people buried in a mass grave in the central-southern state of Morelos.

The exhumation began in the town of Tetelcingo in the presence of human rights organizations.

Shoddy practices at the gravesite for the unidentified dead came to light last year after a judge ordered the state prosecutor's office to exhume the body of a Mexican trader and turn it over to family members.

The Mexican trader, Oliver Wenceslao Navarrete Hernandez, was kidnapped and murdered in 2013. He was then buried in the mass grave in Tetelcingo.

During the exhumation, the authorities found they had to dig around dozens of plastic-wrapped bodies without any documentation connecting them to case files.

Genetic samples will be taken from each set of the remains to verify their identities before they are reburied in marked graves.

Source: XINHUA