Opinion | Tomb raiders: Far from the glamour of Lara Croft and Indiana Jones, these are thieves with a history of being difficult to legislate against

The reality of tomb raiding is not that of the glamorous treasure hunter Lara Croft or the antiquities-saving professor Indiana Jones, but a thief selecting easy and rich targets.

This applies to the recently buried as well as ancient tombs, as we have been reminded in Hong Kong in recent months with the Post carrying stories of graves being dug up, coffins ransacked and left exposed and valuables interred with the dead being stolen.

In October, when the first case made headlines, police classified the case as criminal damage which surprised many, but there are very few laws that protect the dead in Hong Kong.

The city has statutory provisions which make disturbing graves and the exhumation of a corpse a crime; however there is no crime of disturbing the dead. The most serious possible charge remains prosecution for theft, relying on the ancient English case of William Haynes.

In 1613, William Haynes was accused at the Leicester Assizes of digging up four corpses from a graveyard and taking the sheets which had been wound around the corpses. A point of law was referred to the Justices at the Serjeant’s Inn, London, because any case of theft had to involve taking property that belonged to someone.

The issue – did the winding sheets belong to anyone?

The Justices soon clarified that “a dead body, being but a lump of earth hath no capacity”, could not receive gifts or own property. This could have resulted in the interpretation that the sheets belonged to no one but the common law detests a vacuum and a gap in ownership will usually be filled by construing the would-be donor to still be the owner.