Thaindian News

New Delhi, Feb 1 (ANI): A Chinese court has sentenced a man to death for kidnapping and caging two girls in a dungeon and raping 9 other women.

40-year-old Zeng Qiangbao was convicted of rape, illegally imprisoning, robbery and forcible seizure, according to the verdict of the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei province, on Sunday.

The court heard that Qiangbao, a worker in a steel factory in Wuhan, had caged two teenage girls in a dungeon for 590 days and 317 days as sex slaves until they were rescued by police on May 14 last year, reports the China Daily.

He also raped another nine women from July 2007 to May 2010, the prosecutor said.

On Sept 16, 2008, Qiangbao captured 16-year-old Hu and took her to a dungeon under his house and raped her, the prosecutor said.

On July 2, 2009, he again kidnapped a 19-year-old girl surnamed Zhou and sexually assaulted her. The girl was also kept in the dungeon.

According to the prosecutor, the girls were repeatedly beaten and raped by Qiangbao.

The two were rescued on May 14, 2010, after a man surnamed Du visited his friend’s electronics repair shop and found a note in a partially dismantled television.

“Help. I’ve been held prisoner underground for more than a year,” the note read.

Along with the words was a hand-drawn map that showed where the girls were being kept, as well as the telephone number and address of Zhou’s family.

Du called the number and informed the father, who lived just 200 meters from where his daughter was being held. The father immediately called police and arrived at the scene a few hours later.

The police later rushed to the scene and found the two girls naked and on the verge of death.

The case shocked the media and the public, and Qiangbao was referred to as a “dungeon devil”.

“Zeng, who devastated the physical and psychological health of the girls and exerted an extremely negative influence on society, should be severely punished,” said the verdict. (ANI)