Hospital baby abductor jailed for 1 year
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A woman convicted of abducting a newborn baby from a hospital in northwest China's Shaanxi Province has been sentenced to a year in prison.
Ge Qianru, 20, admitted she had dressed as a nurse and taken the baby girl from the First Hospital Affiliated to the Xi'an Jiaotong University on Nov. 21, 2009 only 15 hours after the baby was born.
She said she had wanted to adopt the baby as her own.
Video from the hospital's surveillance camera showed the "nurse" took the baby to a bathroom. When she came out again, she had changed into her own clothes and left the hospital with the baby in her arms.
Police in Xi'an published the footage and offered a 10,000-yuan reward for information leading to the woman's arrest and the baby's return.
Within a week, police identified the woman as Ge, a peasant woman from Meixian County in Shaanxi, who had worked in southern Guangdong Province for two years.
Ge was arrested on Nov. 30 in Dongguan, a manufacturing base in Guangdong. The baby was confirmed to be healthy and was reunited with her parents.
The People's Court in Yanta District of Xi'an heard the case Tuesday and passed the sentence later that evening.
The court showed leniency in sentencing as Ge had confessed to her crime and there had been no serious consequences, said a statement from the court.
Ge's family offered to pay the baby's parents 10,000 yuan (1,470 U.S. dollars) in compensation.
In China, child abductors face capital punishment in severe cases that result in deaths.
