GRIEVING family members endured the harrowing spectacle of seeing a loved one exhumed and then reburied.

Services were held as the coffin containing the body of Stephen Smith, 44, of Haydon Wick, was removed from a cemetery and then taken to Bristol for a post mortem.

Further prayers were conducted at the reinternment.

Detectives were instructed by the Wiltshire coroner to dig up his body after fresh information emerged following Mr Smith's burial earlier this year.

The electrical engineer died suddenly at his home in Haydon Wick on June 15 and was buried on June 24 after pathologists, who recorded a death from natural causes, decided an inquest was not needed.

But three weeks afterwards "previously unknown information" came to light.

After two days of preparation, forensic teams completed the pain-staking task of lifting Mr Smith's coffin from the ground at Mayshill Cemetery, in Nibley, near Yate, South Gloucestershire.

A police motorcade accompanied a hearse in which the body, inside a new coffin, was taken to Southmead Hospital in Bristol for Home Office pathologist Dr Basil Purdue to carry out a second post-mortem examination.

Detective Inspector James Vaughan, leading the inquiry, said it was "too early to speculate" when the results would available.

Mr Smith's body was driven back to the heavily-guarded cemetery and re-interred immediately after the post-mortem examination.

"We have entered the forensic stage of the exhumation and crime scene disciplines are being applied," said DI Vaughan yesterday.

"The entire operation is being filmed from inside the marquee in case a criminal case results from any findings."

Senior officers at the scene said all lines of inquiry were being reopened in what has now become an unexplained death.

"Had the pathologist known the information we know now there may have been a different conclusion, " said DI Vaughan

Mr Smith was married to Sybille and had three children Andrew, Stephy and Jenny.

In a death notice in the Evening Advertiser he was described by his family as a "caring husband" and as a "devoted father" who would "never be forgotten by all his nieces, nephews and friends."

Catherine Turnbull