Almost two weeks after it was buried, a casket has had to be dug up after it was discovered that the morgue had released the wrong body.

A hospital in China has apologised after its morgue released the wrong bodies to two families, which required one of the corpses to be exhumed almost two weeks after the funeral.

The error was the responsibility of First Hospital of Cheng’an County, in Hebei Province in North China, and was only rectified after the second family arrived to retrieve the body of a 21-year-old crash victim on 8 April.

However, the family was shocked to find that the young man, named Cheng Guaiguai, was not there.

Instead, Mr Cheng’s relatives were given the body of an 80-year-old woman.

It was later discovered that his body had been mistakenly handed to another family at the end of March, and had been buried some 13 days earlier.

Speaking to local media about the mix-up, Cheng Guaiguai’s uncle, Cheng Yahong, said the morgue charged the family 9,600 RMB (£1,100) to keep the corpse until it was ready to hold a funeral.

Mr Cheng said: “[My nephew] died in a traffic accident on 15 March and was kept in the morgue at Cheng’an People’s Hospital for more than 20 days.

“Yesterday (8 April), we went to the morgue to receive his body, but we were given someone else’s corpse.

“That’s when we contacted the police.

“In the end, we discovered that his corpse had been released to a family in the town of Matou on 25 March.

“They buried him on 27 March. It had already been 13 days.”

He added: “Officers from our local police station and workers from the hospital morgue accompanied us to Matoan and exhumed his body.

“This is a joke of astronomical proportions.”

Mr Cheng’s family was able to reclaim the body and hold the funeral later that day.

He added: “We’ve been compensated, and he has now been buried.

“I won’t say how much they paid out in damages, only that they compensated us and the Matou Town family too.”

A spokesperson for the morgue said: “We found the body. We didn’t lose it; we accidentally released it on 25 March.”

Local police are also still investigating the incident.