The bodies believed to be of 13 Rohingya teenagers and young men were found beside a road in a northern Yangon suburb on Monday morning, according to media reports, leading to an investigation.
Meanwhile, the Free Rohingya Coalition, a global network of Rohingya activists, claimed that all of them are Rohingyas.
A police source said the victims were known to be Rohingyas, adding: “I was informed that they were smuggled inside a vehicle and died due to a lack of oxygen.”
The victims are estimated to be between the ages of 16 and 30.
Dumped at Ngwe Nant Thar, a village in Hlegu Township about 25km north of Yangon's city centre, their corpses were discovered by a group of women who were on their way to a market in Yangon region.
“They are definitely not from this village,” a witness told RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity.
“I think they are Rohingya people. I heard that more than 70 of them were arrested in Hlegu yesterday (Sunday) as well,” the witness added.
A second source, who too preferred anonymity, said that the women immediately contacted local authorities, who launched an investigation.
“We think they are Rohingya people … so we called a Muslim volunteer group and other volunteer groups from [nearby] Pale village,” the source said.
“They went there to take the dead bodies to the hospital and have them examined to determine the cause of death and to open a case in the matter … According to the groups, the dead bodies exhibited signs of injuries.”
“There were no injuries found on their bodies. The cause of their deaths is still unknown,” a local official told Myanmar Now on Monday afternoon.
But the second witness said at least one of the victims had a “gash on his forehead,” while another had one on his leg, and that all of them “appeared to have been submerged in water for a long time,” despite there being no bodies of water in the area.
“Their hands and feet were wrinkled from water,” the source maintained.
“Some had welts on their backs. Their skin was torn from injuries, as if they had been beaten. The hospital said that they had been dead for more than 48 hours – at least a day before they were found.”
Residents of the area believe the victims may have been killed by local authorities or by brokers they had hired to help them flee squalid conditions in refugee camps in western Myanmar's Rakhine state and Bangladesh.
“I heard that the brokers who brought them beat them when they didn't get the money they wanted,” the source said.
“Another possibility is that they were arrested and then killed … [But] I think that it is more likely that brokers killed them.”
The discovery of the bodies came amid reports of two other groups of Rohingyas fleeing camp conditions.
Local media in Myanmar's Mon state reported that 78 Rohingyas, including children, had been arrested when the motorboat they were traveling in docked at the Ka Mar Wet brook on Monday morning.
Many are arrested in transit as they make the journey from Rakhine State to the Thai-Myanmar border or coastal areas in the country's south. They are then charged with immigration offences that carry sentences of at least two years in prison.