The case of the missing child, the botched tests and a reunion with the wrong abducted son
- Mother sues Chinese court over the mistaken identification of a kidnapped child two decades ago
A Chinese woman who raised a boy rescued more than two decades ago in the mistaken belief that he was her abducted son will take her multimillion-yuan compensation claim to court after failing to reach a settlement with the authorities.
Chongqing mother Zhu Xiaojuan, 53, is suing the Henan Higher People’s Court for 2.95 million yuan (US$426,600) over the mix-up, claiming compensation for mental suffering and the cost of raising the child, The Beijing News reported late last month.
Zhu’s one-year-old son, Panpan, disappeared in 1992, the report said, without elaborating on the circumstances.
After a three-year search, Zhu saw a boy who looked like her child among a group of abducted children rescued by authorities in Henan.
The Henan court arranged for Zhu, her husband and the child to have various “biological tests”, and the results indicated that the boy was related to the couple.
Zhu believed the boy was her son until January last year when the family’s former nanny, He Xiaoping, admitted that she had taken the couple’s son, raised him and was finally willing to return him to them, the report said.
DNA tests revealed that the nanny’s “son”, now known as Liu Jinxin, was the couple’s biological child while the man the family had raised for more than two decades was not.