BEIJING
Police have arrested a gang who were allegedly trafficking women to be sold as brides in China, state media reported.
Police in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, northern China, said they had arrested 31 suspects and released 14 victims, including 11 from Myanmar, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Five of the alleged victims are aged under 18 and have been handed over to the authorities in Myanmar, a police officer with the railway public security department in Baotou City said.
The arrests were carried out after one woman attracted the attention of a police officer as she was being taken by train from Baotou to Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi province, in August.
She told officers she had been abducted from Myanmar and they arrested her alleged kidnapper as he tried to drag her away.
The subsequent investigation led police across five provinces over three months, resulting in a further 30 arrests.
Xinhua reported Monday that the victims were lured by job offers before they were sold in remote rural areas as wives, with prices ranging from 50,000 yuan ($8,150) to 90,000 yuan. Police said the gang had accumulated 1.9 million yuan.
China has a surplus of single men due to its one-child policy and the illicit abortion of female babies, particularly in rural area.
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