Doctors cut out Diego Maradona's heart before he was buried when a plot to dig him up and steal it was uncovered, Argentine reporter claims

• Argentine doctor turned journalist Nelson Castro says Diego Maradona was buried without his heart.
• Fans of a team named Gimnasia planned to exhume the star and take his heart, he said in a TV interview.

Soccer great Diego Maradona's heart was removed before his burial so that a group of "hooligans" plotting to steal it couldn't do so, a renowned Argentine doctor has claimed.

Maradona died in November 2020 after suffering a cardiac arrest, just days after having surgery for a bleed on his brain.

Speaking on Argentine television network El Trece, Nelson Castro, a doctor turned journalist, claimed that after Maradona's death, his heart was removed when authorities discovered a plot to dig up the star's body and take the organ.

The plot, Castro claimed, was orchestrated by a group of fans from Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, a soccer team from the city of La Plata associated with Maradona. He managed the club from September 2019 until his death.

"There was a group of fans that planned to break in and extract his heart," Castro said in an interview to promote a new book he has written about Maradona's health, titled "La Salud de Diego: La Verdadera Historia," or "Diego's Health: The True Story."

"It was detected that this was going to happen so his heart was removed."

"It never came to pass because it was an act of such enormous daring, but it was detected that it was going to, so they extracted his heart."

Castro also said that removal of the heart was needed to help determine the cause of Maradona's death.

During the interview, he also asserted that at the time of his death, Maradona's heart weighed around half a kilogram, roughly two-thirds more than the 300 grams a healthy adult male's heart would normally weigh.

"Even though he had a sportsman's heart, which is a big heart, it was big because of something else. Not only because he was an athlete but because of the heart failure he had," Castro said.

Castro did not reveal the source for his claim about the removal of Maradona's heart, but said he had talked to doctors who treated Maradona, the Times of London reports.

The story has, the Daily Telegraph reports, caused a media storm in Argentina, making newspaper front pages in the days since Castro made his claims.

Maradona accused by Cuban woman of rape

Maradona, widely considered one of the greatest soccer players of all time, has been the subject of a number of controversies since his death.

Earlier this week, a Cuban woman named Mavys Alvarez accused Maradona of raping her in 2000 when she was 16 years old.

"He covers my mouth, he rapes me, I don't want to think about it too much," Alvarez said at a news conference. "I stopped being a girl, all my innocence was stolen from me."

Alvarez had previously said that Maradona was involved in trafficking her from Cuba to Argentina. She said that the incident occurred at a Havana rehab clinic where Maradona was staying.