A grieving father who thought his newborn baby had died was shocked to find out his girlfriend had faked the pregnancy after he saw a doll buried inside his dead baby’s coffin.

Melvin Mendoza discovered the newborn baby he was grieving for had never even existed after he and his friends dug up the tiny white coffin and found a doll in it, instead of a human baby. His partner, Rosa Castellanos Diaz, had reportedly spent nine months pretending to be pregnant with twins.

It is reported that her actions were a bizarre attempt to keep her “wayward” partner by her side, although this has not been confirmed.

Last Friday morning, Rosa left her village home and took a bus to the Honduras’ capital Tegucigalpa, claiming she was heading for the city’s Escuela Hospital to give birth to her baby. That night, she reportedly called Melvin, a member of the Honduran Armed Forces, to tell him the sad news that child had died while being delivered.

The grief-stricken father and his relatives put on a wake and awaited the arrival of his partner and the “dead child”. Rosa reportedly arrived at noon the next day, carrying the coffin. However, she told loved ones they could not see the “baby” as the hospital had sealed the box and prohibited her from opening it.

The funeral took place at her local graveyard in El Coyolar, Honduras. Family and friends took turns to carry the “deceased twin’s” coffin before bidding an emotional farewell to them.

Rosa also told everyone that she had left the other twin being cared for in the hospital. But the next day, Melvin’s pals reportedly began to doubt Rosa’s story. They expressed fears that Rosa had invented the story to convince Melvin not to leave her, so they decided to return to the graveyard to dig up the coffin with him. When they did, they found a plastic doll dressed up as a baby inside.

Shocking footage, shared on Twitter by shows the doll lying inside the open coffin by the side of the exhumed grave.

One, Ismael Mejia, told Honduras’ El Heraldo newspaper: “The whole thing didn’t seem right. So in the night we went to the cemetery to dig it up. When we pulled out the box, to our surprise what we found inside was a doll, dressed up as if it were a child.

“We took the coffin to the police so they could see that we didn’t take the child out of the box and replace it with a doll.”

After discovering the alleged trick, Melvin reportedly decided not to press charges against Rosa.