5 punished in trafficking probe
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Abduction victim Peng Wenle (right) caresses his younger brother yesterday outside their home in Shenzhen in Guangdong Province after he was reunited with his family. The boy was snatched from near the family's little shop in Shenzhen in 2008, sparking a 1,007-day search by his parents that came to an end on Tuesday after a photograph of the boy was posted on a microblog. |
Police have seized five people suspected of human trafficking after media reports named Gongji Town in Anhui Province's Taihe County as a source of child abduction and trafficking.
The Taihe government said two disabled children had been found after a three-day search. Of the five suspects, one has been officially detained and the other four punished, officials said.
One of the suspects, Gong Chunfeng, 61, bought Zhang Qinglin's five-year-old disabled son for 4,000 yuan (US$607) in 2006 and had used him to beg in the cities of Yueyang, Changsha and Huaihua in Hunan Province since October 2006, the government said. As a reward, Zhang has received another 20,000 yuan five times through the years.
Another two suspects, a couple, Gong Baohua and Wei Yongqin, were found to have taken their adopted 15-year-old daughter, a polio victim whose hands and feet were deformed, to beg in Shanghai and Nanjing in Jiangsu Province since last year, said the government.
Their younger son said his sister, an abandoned infant, had been adopted by a family in Funan County. But they could not afford her any more when she was three, and Wei brought her home.
