China mine shaft killers mimic grim novel plot

BEIJING (Reuters) - Five coal miners in central China have been arrested for conspiring to kill fellow workers with cyanide and extorting money from pit owners in a grim re-enactment of an acclaimed novel and film, state media said.

The case, in China's impoverished central province of Henan, mirrors the plot of "Shen Mu" ("Sacred Wood"), a novel by Liu Qingbang, in which a pair of miners in northern Shaanxi province pretended to be family members of mine workers they killed underground to wrest compensation from corrupt mine owners.

In the book, which was adapted into an award-winning movie called "Blind Shaft" in 2003, the miners would claim their victims had died during accidents.

In the real-life case, the suspects duped fellow miners into taking capsules containing cyanide, telling them they would fall unconscious but "wake up" after 10 hours, the Beijing News said.

The miners promised their victims that they would be given a cut of the compensation paid out by mine owners, who would be led to believe that they had died during accidents underground.

In September, a miner in Hubei province died shortly after fellow workers pulled him out of a shaft at a local mine, shaking and frothing at the mouth.

Soon afterwards a group claiming to include family members arrived to demand compensation from the mine's owner.

Police linked the case to two separate incidents in which two people were killed for compensation claims in Henan that occurred between December 2006 and June this year, the Beijing News said.

China, the world's most deadly coal producer, has been battling to wipe out corruption in its mining industry, which remains rife due to spotty enforcement and high demand.

On Thursday, a gas blast ripped through a coal mine in Shanxi, northeast of Shaanxi, and 96 miners were feared dead.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

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