The Beijing police said Sunday that they are investigating the poisoning of a high school student by a classmate.
A student surnamed Zhao who is in 9th grade at Beijing Academy, also known as Huiwen High School, poisoned a classmate surnamed Luo with copper sulfate on April 12, read a school announcement that has gone viral since it was posted online on Friday.
Luo was diagnosed with damage to the kidneys, liver and digestive tract soon after being hospitalized on April 12, the school headmaster confirmed with the Beijing Youth Daily on Saturday. The school refused to reveal further details due to the young age of the students involved, according to the Beijing Times.
Zhao received demerits from the school on May 30 as punishment for the poisoning, according to the statement.
The school's punishment has triggered heated discussion among netizens. Many believe the punishment was too lenient for someone who intentionally caused such great damage to someone else, and they have called for an amendment to the Law on the Protection of Minors.
The current law states, "The policy of education, persuasion and redemption shall be implemented, and the principle of taking education as the main method and punishment as the subsidiary shall be upheld. Delinquents shall be given relatively light or mitigated punishments or be exempted from punishment."
Wan Daqiang, deputy director of the Beijing Lawyers Association's Committee for the Protection of Juveniles, told the Global Times that the punishment imposed by the school is reasonable under the current law.
He also noted, however, that harsher punishments might need to be imposed on juveniles, as increasingly younger people have committed severe crimes.
According to an online poll conducted by media outlet sohu.com in late May, some 95.5 percent of over 10,000 respondents chose a response that said, "The law should be amended and juvenile criminals should be punished."
Lin Senhao, a graduate student at Shanghai's Fudan University, was convicted of fatally poisoning his roommate with the toxic chemical N-Nitrosodimethylamine in 2013 and was executed in December 2015.
