Guiyang: A court in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, opened a retrial of a widely followed child abduction and trafficking case, after some criminal facts were newly discovered.
The case involved Yu Huaying, who had been sentenced to death by the Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court last year for abducting and trafficking 11 children in the 1990s for financial gain.
Yu later appealed to a higher court, and the Guizhou High People’s Court ordered the intermediate court to rehear the case because it determined that the original ruling omitted some criminal facts.
The omitted facts refer to six other children suspected of being abducted and trafficked by Yu. The intermediate court said on Friday that the total number of victims in Yu’s case increased to 17 between 1993 and 2003.
China Central Television said that Yu met a man, Gong Xianliang, while she was in her 20s and working away from home. She later gave birth to a boy while living with Gong, and, due to a lack of financial resources, the two sent their son to Hebei through a middleman and sold him for 5,000 yuan ($707), starting Yu’s illegal journey of abducting children to collect money.
The 17 victims came from 12 families, including five where Yu had abducted two children at a time, and some children were abandoned by her, Xinhua News Agency said, adding that the victims and their families requested the court to severely punish the woman. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
