A FEMALE detective in Hangzhou is being investigated over a case in which two men were wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a woman and jailed for 10 years.

    The two men, Zhang Gao-ping and his nephew, Zhang Hui, were declared innocent and released March 26 by the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People’s Court.

    The court said that “the acquittal was rendered, as there was new evidence showing the possibility of another suspect. Evidence presented during the previous trial was not enough to support the conviction.”

    The policewoman, Nie Haifen, was born in 1965 and led the homicide investigation team in the rape case against the Zhangs in May 2003. Nie won many city-level and national honors after the case concluded with their conviction.

    The provincial public security department said Nie and her team had allegedly tortured the two suspects during interrogations to obtain testimony that later became key evidence in the suspects’ convictions. The department vowed to investigate Nie and all police officers involved in the case, and to not tolerate or cover up their mistakes.

    In 2004, Zhang Hui was given a death sentence with two-year reprieve and Zhang Gaoping was given a 15-year prison term for raping and killing a woman in Hangzhou.

    The verdict from the first trial held that Zhang Hui and Zhang Gaoping carried the woman on their truck May 19, 2003. Police found the woman’s body in a roadside ditch later the same day. They had been serving their prison terms in Xinjiang.

    Sources close to the court said investigators found another suspect whose DNA matched that collected from under the woman’s fingernails. The suspect was executed in 2005 for raping and killing a college girl in Hangzhou that year. (Mu Zi)