Three detained by Chinese police over alleged baby abduction in Henan province
- Plot unravels after pressure gets too much for person who took four-month-old boy
- Henan police say park surveillance footage shows no abduction happened
Police in central China have detained three people over an alleged fake abduction of an infant in a family drama that has played out in national and social media.
The drama began in Zhoukou, Henan province, on Thursday morning when the four-month-old boy was reportedly taken from his mother, surnamed Liu, after she fainted in a park.
Liu’s husband, surnamed Zhu, made a public appeal to the abductor and offered a 100,000 yuan (US$14,480) reward for the child’s safe return, The Beijing News reported.
On Sunday, after days of intensive local social media coverage, Zhoukou police said the baby had been “safely retrieved” from the provincial capital of Zhengzhou and was in good health.
Quoting police, Dahe Daily reported that dozens of police officers trawled through hours of security camera footage from the park and interviewed various witnesses but came up empty-handed. The police could not identify a suspect and concluded that no abduction had taken place at the park.
Police bulletins about the search for the child then began describing the incident as a “loss” rather than an “abduction” and said the boy had been “retrieved” rather than “rescued”.