A fruit vendor died after a physical conflict with a group of urban management officers, in Linwu county, Chenzhou, Central China's Hunan Province on Wednesday. Photo: IC

A man takes photos of Deng Zhengjia, a fruit vendor who died after a physical conflict with a group of urban management officers, in Linwu county, Chenzhou, Central China's Hunan Province on Wednesday. Photo: CFP

A county chief from Chenzhou, Hunan Province Thursday said there is no evidence a local fruit vendor was killed due to a blow to the head during a physical conflict with a team of urban management officers, or chengguan, despite accusations from the dead man's family members and witnesses.

Deng Zhengjia, a fruit vendor from Linwu county, which is administered by Chenzhou, was selling watermelons on a street in Linwu without a permit on Wednesday morning with his wife Huang Xixi. The couple was fined 100 yuan ($16.30) by a team of patrolling chengguan and quarreled with them.

The couple then moved to another intersection where vendors are allowed to sell their products, but later fought again with the same group of chengguan. "They started to beat my uncle, and one of them hit him in the head and he fell down immediately," Deng Zhengjia's niece, who was at the scene, told the Global Times over the phone.

Several witnesses reached by the Global Times confirmed that Deng was hit by a group of officers, who ignored Huang's request that Deng be sent to hospital.

A statement from the Linwu county government Wednesday afternoon said Deng "suddenly fell down and died during  quarrels with the chengguan."

He Zunqing, the head of Linwu county, said at a press conference Thursday afternoon that it was unclear whether Deng died from the blow to the head, adding that an investigation is being undertaken and will seriously punish responsible parties in line with the autopsy report, according to a series of Sina Weibo posts by the Hunan Daily.

However, the posts were deleted after a few hours.

The press conference was scheduled to be held at 12:30 pm, but was postponed to 4 pm to "wait for the county head," wrote Jiang Gewei, a reporter with the Legal Weekly on his Weibo.

The local government's handling of the incident, along with the tarnished image of chengguan, quickly ignited a national uproar.

Deng's niece told the Global Times that her uncle's body stayed at the scene after the incident, but a large team of armed police and police officers started to gather on Wednesday afternoon, and tried to snatch the body around midnight.

The law enforcers then had physical conflicts with family members and surrounding people who were protecting the body and some people were injured. Deng's body was taken away at around 4 am Thursday and was put at the entrance to his village, before family members took it home, said the niece.

"The county head and deputy Party chief of the county were all there with the police, but they left after refusing our request to see the surveillance footage of the conflict to verify if my uncle was hit by the chengguan," she said.

The incident renewed accusations that local governments are still suppressing incidents of chengguan violence to maintain stability instead of resolving the real causes, which reflected controversies in China's urbanization process when millions of farmers entering the cities for a living.

Reasons for the increasing numbers of conflicts include a lack of specific laws to regulate the enforcement measures and the powers of chengguan, and poor measures to solve the illegal status of vendors, Wang Yi, an expert in urban management studies from Yangzhou University, told the Global Times.

Deng's niece confirmed that she and several family members witnessed the autopsy on Thursday afternoon, which was completed by coroners from Chenzhou, but they had not received a result yet, and Huang Xixi, the dead man's wife, was still in hospital. 

Huang Xixi said she called the chengguan "bandits" during the quarrel, and ripped up the credentials of an officer, named Liao Weichang, chief of the third division, the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald reported.

Huang Shenghong, a publicity official at the county, told the Global Times that eight chengguan officers involved in the case, including Liao, were being investigated. However, he declined to comment about the overnight confrontation and why the government wanted to take Deng's body.

An officer with the local public security bureau told the Global Times that they are interviewing witnesses to reconstruct the scene.

Jiang Jie contributed to this story