The corpse was collected from the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital by undertakers who thought it belonged to someone else and took it to a funeral parlour in North Walsham.

It remained there for four days before hospital staff realised the blunder and the body was returned to the hospital mortuary before being collected by the correct funeral directors in Norwich.

The family of the body which was wrongly removed have been informed.

The hospital has blamed human error for the mistake, which is understood to have arisen because the mortuary held the bodies of two people with the same surname.

The unfortunate incident, which took place earlier this month, has raised questions not only for the hospital but the funeral parlour, Murrell Cork, which did not detect that it had collected the wrong body.

Dr Bernard Brett, medical director at the........

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