Chinese man arrested on poisoning charges

Police have arrested a man suspected of putting rat poison in food that may have killed dozens of people in eastern China, police said today.

The man was caught early on Sunday aboard a train in the city of Shangqiu, around 250 miles north west of Nanjing where the poisonings occurred, said police in Shangqiu.

The poisonings on Saturday, traced to a Nanjing snack shop, sickened more than 200 people, according to state media. Authorities have refused to release a death toll, but news reports suggested dozens might be dead, including students at a nearby school.

The suspect, Chen Zhengping, was spotted at 3am local time on Sunday after Nanjing police put out an alert that he was wanted on murder charges and was fleeing aboard the train, police said.

Police had no other information on Chen’s identity or a possible motive.

But the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po, which has close ties to Chinese authorities, said Chen was the cousin of the snack shop owner, and put poison in its food out of jealousy at his relative’s success.

A spokeswoman for the Nanjing city government refused to confirm whether anyone had been had arrested or release any information on the investigation. Nanjing police refused to comment.

Wen Wei Po said Chen ran a competing shop and was angry that his business was not as successful as his cousin’s.

The Nanjing city spokeswoman refused to confirm that account. Other city departments referred questions to the propaganda office of Jiangsu province, where Nanjing is located. It refused to release information.

China has suffered poisoning attacks in the past blamed on business rivals or people with grudges.

In July, a noodle shop owner was arrested on charges that he poisoned customers at a rival business by putting rat poison in its soup.

That incident in the southern region of Guangxi sickened 57 people but no deaths were reported.

Tests on the Nanjing poison have identified it as a brand of rat poison called Dushuqiang, which has been banned for sale in China since the mid-1990s, according to an official of the Nanjing Agriculture and Forestry Bureau.