Opinion | More questions than answers for poison victim Zhu Ling 18 years after case closed
'The grass-roots-style trial will never stop until the official trial begins,' says a blogger
When 21-year-old Zhu Ling, a talented and versatile senior at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, suffered from what later turned out to be poisoning by thallium in 1995, the case won her and her family national media attention and sympathy.
It’s been almost 19 years since Beijing Police closed the case without arresting any suspect, citing inadequate evidence. But now an online campaign is under way to force police to reopen the cold case and bring the culprit, or culprits, to justice.
The deadly chemical, which was twice placed into Zhu's drinking water, didn’t kill her, but some claim it might as well have. After years of medication and therapy, the now 40-year-old Zhu Ling has turned into a 200-pound, paralysed, diabetic, almost-blind woman with the mental capacity of a six-year-old.
Zhu’s parents, both retired intellectuals now in their 70s, have devoted their lives tending to their disabled daughter. They said they stopped hiring help at one point, realising no one could take care of her as well as they could. But the future weighs on them as they get older.
For the Zhu family, it seems everything that could go wrong has.
Zhu’s elder sister died in 1989 in an accident during a field trip. She was a student at Peking University, a major rival of Tsinghua.
