The recent killing of a 13-year-old boy in northern China, allegedly perpetrated by three boys now in police custody, has ignited a fervent debate in the media regarding juvenile crime and the challenges faced by children left behind by migrant workers.
According to state media reports, the police apprehended the three suspects after they purportedly bullied and fatally harmed the junior high school student in Handan, Hebei province, on March 10th, subsequently burying him in a shallow grave. As of now, no formal charges have been filed.
Local law enforcement authorities are treating the incident as a homicide and have assembled a team of over 60 individuals to investigate the matter, as per CCTV News. State media has revealed that both the victim and the accused are offspring of rural migrant workers, who entrust childcare responsibilities to grandparents and other relatives while they labor in urban centers for extended periods.
In interviews with Chinese media outlets and on social media platforms, relatives of the deceased and their legal representative have asserted that the victim had been subjected to persistent bullying.
The subsequent day, authorities in a village uncovered the boy’s remains interred beneath a tarpaulin within an abandoned greenhouse. The incident has captivated the nation, eliciting widespread outrage among Chinese citizens on various social media platforms.
