The bodies and body parts featured in an exhibition which is set to tour two venues in the province of Noord-Brabant may have been sold illegally, the AD reports.

Primetime Exhibition, the organiser of anatomical exhibition Real Human Bodies, claims the bodies are those of Americans who gave express permission for their bodies to be used for exhibition purposes and are owned by Corcoran Laboratories in Michigan – now American Plastification Company.

The company, however, denies any links with the organisers and says it has reason to believe the bodies, which includes that of a baby, are those of Chinese homeless people who died in the street and whose bodies were picked up and then sold illegally, the AD writes.

Plastinated bodies, in which plastic replaces water and fat,  came to fame when German pathologist Gunther von Hagen mounted the exhibition Body Worlds in 1995, which has now become a permanent fixture in Amsterdam. Von Hagen has been at the centre of illegal body import allegations himself but was never charged.

According to the AD, some 13,000 people, among whom 60 from the Netherlands, have given permission for their bodies to be displayed in Von Hagen’s exhibition.