60-yr-old teacher held for molesting 19 girls in China

Beijing: A 60-year-old teacher has been detained by police for molesting 19 primary school girls in one of the worst cases of child abuse in China.

Zhou Jianmin, to retire soon, confessed to police that he molested 19 girls, according to a government statement on Saturday. He teaches science for grade three and grade four students at Bazishao Township School in Heshan district, Yiyang city of central China's Hunan province.

Zeng Xinyue, principal of the school, has been dismissed from his post by the district education bureau. So far 26 girls, 8 to 11 years old, have received body checks and two of them suffered from genital inflammation.

The government has offered psychological consultation to the affected students, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. China has had a string of child molestation cases involving teachers in recent years.

In September, a 61-year-old primary school teacher was detained for raping several girls in central Hubei Province. In April, a court in eastern Anhui Province sentenced a school teacher to death for raping five schoolgirls and molesting six others.

In a move intensify the crackdown on such crimes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate announced in May that China charged a total of 8,069 people with child molestation from 2010 to 2013.