Police Commissioner Owen Ellington has rubbished claims that members of the security forces tried to bury bodies in the May Pen Cemetery as part of a cover up.

Mayor of Kingston Desmond McKenzie announced Thursday that an order to cease the burials had been handed down, following criticisms that the police were trying to bury the bodies under the cover of "darkness" and without proper authorization.

But this was strongly dismissed by Commissioner Ellington.

“There is non confusion about the bodies in the cemetery. The bodies were taken there by the undertakers because they could not store them at their facilities. The police went there along with the pathologist to conduct the autopsies,” Commissioner Ellington said.

“The bodies were photographed, fingerprinted, blood samples taken and they were numbered. They were to be buried on orders from the police, that is no longer the case,”

“In relation to the bodies found outside of coffins, criminal elements went inside the cemetery and overturned some of the boxes. They have since been put back in the boxes and taken away for storage,”

Commissioner Ellington disclosed that postmortems on the 73 bodies will commence next week Monday.

“In relation to the post mortem operation, we will have post mortem operations taking place Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week at Maddens, at a second location in Kingston and at the Spanish Town morgue,” he said.