A court has charged over 70 suspects with killing their coworkers and blackmailing owners of unlicensed mines for compensation
(From Caixin Online)
By staff reporter Wang Heyan
Police in the coal-rich northern region of Inner Mongolia have unraveled a string of crimes, where 17 miners were allegedly killed by their colleagues who then pretended to be their close kin to claim compensation for the deaths that were made to appear as mine accidents.
Bayannur Intermediate People’s Procuratorate in Inner Mongolia, a regional court, said it has charged 74 suspects with murder, fraud and blackmail linked to the deaths. The local prosecutor’s office made the announcement on May 31, on its official account on Weibo, a popular micro blog site. The office, however, did not say when these crimes were committed or how much money the accused had taken from mine owners.
A person who was briefed about the case told Caixin that the alleged killings came to light in January 2015 when police from a district under the city of Bayannur was investigating a mining accident. Officers found that some of the victims, who coworkers claimed had perished in the disaster, were actually alive.
Police uncovered the 17 alleged murders in a follow-up investigation that lasted for over a year, the source said. Read more