BEIJING: Police in China have launched an investigation into the suspected abduction of about 100 Vietnamese women who had been sold as brides to Chinese men, state media said.
The missing women had been living in remote villages in the central province of Hunan, the official Xinhua news agency said late Saturday, citing local police and family members.
After the women disappeared, some husbands received phone calls ordering them to pay ransoms or their wives would be sold again, Xinhua said.
The report did not say when the women disappeared.
Local police would not comment on the investigation when contacted by AFP yesterday.
Hu Jianhe, who paid 36,388 yuan (about US$5,700) for his Vietnamese bride in 2008, said his wife called him two months after she went missing.
“She sobbed and told me that she was kidnapped and sold to another remote village and needed 20,000 yuan to ransom her back,” Hu was quoted as saying. — AFP