PERU – Police in Peru have seized a mummified human, between 600 and 800 years old, from a former food delivery man who claimed to have had it in his home for three decades.

The mummy was in the isothermal bag the man had once used to deliver food to people’s homes.

The man, 26-year-old Julio Cesar Bermejo, will remain in detention while investigators look into the case, a government official told AFP on Tuesday.

Mr Bermejo told local media the mummy, whom he called “Juanita”, was “like my spiritual girlfriend”.

“At home, she’s in my room, she sleeps with me. I take care of her,” he said in a video that went viral on social media.

Mr Bermejo said his father brought the mummy home almost 30 years ago.

According to the Ministry of Culture, the pre-Hispanic relic was a “mummified adult male individual, presumably from the eastern area of Puno”, a region in the Peruvian Andes about 1,300km south-east of Lima.

“It’s not a Juanita, it’s a Juan,” a specialist at the ministry affirmed, adding that the mummy was of a man at least 45 years old.

The body was wrapped in bandages in a foetal position.

Police found the remains in Mr Bermejo’s bag on Saturday while patrolling a park in the city of Puno, where he had been hanging out with friends.

He denied that he was trying to sell the mummy and said he was carrying it around because “my friends wanted to see it”.

The Culture Ministry said it had taken possession of the mummified remains “with the aim of protecting and preserving this heritage”.

Peru is rich in archaeological sites and objects. Its most-visited tourist destination is the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, built in the 15th century, near Cusco. AFP