A banner reads "Stick to anti-gan crime campaign, protect people's life and property security" on the street of Yangzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province Photo: Leng Shumei/GT

A total of 11 local officials were detained and nine suspects arrested in Southwest China's Yunnan Province after the central government's investigation into convicted rapist Sun Xiaoguo, who was sentenced to death two decades ago but was recently found to be roaming free and alleged to be the leader of a criminal gang.

Eleven officials, including former  deputy director of the Yunnan prison administration bureau Zhu Xu and former member of the judicial committee of Yunnan high people's court Liang Zi'an, have been detained for being involved in Sun's case, yunnan.cn reported on Tuesday, citing the Yunnan anti-gang crime office.  

Nine others were arrested and 23 detained for getting involved in Sun's crimes after he got out of prison, the report said. 

The report came amid public interest on Chinese social media in Sun's case, as many wondered how he could escape the death penalty and who were in his "protective umbrella." 

According the yunnan.cn, it is Sun's mother, a former police officer named Sun Heyu, and his stepfather, former deputy director of a public security bureau in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, named Li Qiaozhong, who helped Sun Xiaoguo escape death penalty 20 years ago. 

A screenshot of Sun Xiaoguo Photo: Sina Weibo

Sun Xiaoguo was sentenced to death in 1998 for rape. When he was serving his jail time, his mother and stepfather, together with prison and court personnel, forged a patent of a "linkage locking-type anti-theft manhole cover" for Sun Xiaoguo, helping him get a reduced prison term for making important technical innovations or inventions.

Sun Heyu and Li Qiaozhong were detained in April for seriously violating Party principles and laws. Sun's biological father, surnamed Chen, who divorced his mother in 1982, was not involved in the case, yunnan.cn reported.

The statement from the provincial anti-gang office cleared up public doubts about Sun's family background that his parents were not high-ranking officials like some people had thought, Zhu Lijia, a professor of public management at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Sun's case, however, shows that there were many loopholes in the law enforcement system, patent certification system, and medical system in Yunnan Province, Zhu said.

It also revealed that the legal environment of Yunnan is fragile, Zhu noted. 

Zhu's views were echoed by Chen Tao, a lawyer at the Beijing-based Junyong Law Firm, who said that "Local authorities need to transparently publish authoritative information about the case to the public as soon as possible to strengthen trust in the local government." It also meets the requirements of the ongoing anti-gang crime campaign, Chen said.  

Yunnan provincial authorities met on Tuesday, vowing to resolutely investigate the relative network behind Sun's case with zero tolerance. They would also enhance investigation into gang crimes that had been closed, thepaper.cn reported on Tuesday.