Hanoi, Dec 1 (DPA) A man who encased his wife’s skeleton in a plaster statue and kept it in bed beside him for five years has been ordered to bury the remains, authorities said Tuesday.
Le Van, 55, a resident of Ha Lam village in Thang Binh District in Quang Nam province, removed his wife’s remains from her grave in November 2004 - 20 months after her death - and encased them in a plaster statue of her, according to the Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien.

“I sleep with her every night,” Van told Thanh Nien. “Sometimes my 12-year-old son also hugs her when we sleep.”

“He is very superstitious. He told people he feels much stronger and fresher when he sleeps with his wife’s remains,” Phan Thang An, chairman of the Thang Binh People’s Committee, told DPA. “I think he is an abnormal man.”

Van told Vietnamese media that after his wife died, he slept beside her tomb every clear night. To be able to sleep next to her on rainy nights, he uncovered her tomb and brought her remains home.

Van said his neighbours were initially afraid to visit his house, but came to consider his situation normal after several years.

The chairman of the Ha Lam village People’s Committee, Tran Trong Sanh, told the online newspaper Vietnamnet that local authorities had been unaware of the situation until media reported it last week.

On Monday, a military doctor used an X-ray machine to verify that the statue of Van’s wife contained human bones.

An said Van had violated environmental regulations, and that authorities would require him to bury his wife’s remains.

Vietnamese traditionally bury their dead in graves some distance from human habitations.

Nguyen Thu Phuong, a high school teacher in Hanoi, did not think Van had done anything against the law. “I like him,” Phuong said. “What he did showed he was very faithful to his wife, something not many men are now.”