Police on Tuesday detained a woman in east China's Anhui Province for spreading a rumor online that a series of powerful earthquakes will jolt the province.
The Provincial Department of Security monitored a posting on Monday from Baidu.com, a popular search portal, declaring Anhui was likely to be hit by a series of earthquakes at or above 7 on Richter scale, citing a forecast from the official website of the US Geological Survey.
The posting, identified to be from "Fuyang Normal College bar", also claimed earthquakes of similar magnitude would strike more provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the next two weeks.
Further investigation found the web name of the rumormonger was "shixin manman" in pinyin and the posting was put up on Monday when China was marking its first day of a national mourning for those killed in the devastating 8.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Sichuan Province on May 12.
The police later tracked down a woman identified only by her surname as Liu who was an employee with a local advertising company in Bengbu, a city in Anhui.
Liu was detained at 1 a.m. on Tuesday. The woman allegedly admitted to putting up the posting during police interrogation.
Wang Chuanlin, an officer in charge of web security with Anhui Provincial Department of Security, said: "May 19 was the first day of the three-day national mourning period, Liu, on this very day, spread a rumor online about possible new quakes to cause panic."
The woman was sentenced to 10 days in police custody.
(Xinhua News Agency May 21, 2008)