A man with AIDS was recently sentenced to five years in prison for raping a college female freshman in a graveyard in Maoming City of south China's Guangdong Province in March, the South China Metropolitan News reported.

Luckily, the girl was not infected with HIV, doctors said.

The 37-year-old man, with the alias A Wu, raped Xiao Jia, also an assumed name, in the early morning on March 27 as the latter came back to her hometown of Gaozhou via Maoming from her school in Guangzhou, the provincial capital.

The 21-year-old Xiao Jia is a poor student whose parents are farmers with a meager income.

She came back to her hometown just to handle necessary procedures for getting a student loan.

"Since I major in medical sciences, my first reaction after being raped was to commit suicide when I learned that the rapist had AIDS," the girl was cited as saying.

What made her more depressed was that her roommates drifted apart from her immediately when they learned of her misfortune.

A Wu, who was infected with HIV in 1998, transmitted the deadly virus to his wife, who died last year, the paper said, citing managers with the Maoming bus company.

A Wu was dismissed by the company on March 28, the same day when he was put under arrest.

(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2005)