A former vice mayor in southwest China's Guizhou Province rejected rumors that his family went to Beijing to submit a petition after his daughter was raped by a senior official.

Tian Wanchang, former vice mayor of Liupanshui City, said he had been hospitalized since 2007 for a "serious disease" in Guilin, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and could not take the petition trip to Beijing, the People's Daily reported today.

Tian wrote to the newspaper that he was unclear about what happened to his family while he was in hospital and denied he or his wife had petitioned after Guizhou police failed to handle his daughter's alleged rape case properly.

Internet rumors said Guizhou police sheltered Zhou Shilin, a member of the province's Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body to the government, after he raped Tian's daughter, a student of the Central Academy of Drama, two years ago.

But police denied the allegations, saying they dropped the case due to insufficient evidence.

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