Police have arrested 17 suspects in Shenzhen as part of a major dragnet aimed at child kidnapping, amid a nationwide crackdown on the crime.

The latest arrests involved 51 cases that targeted parents of students in the city in Guangdong province with kidnapping scams, local police said yesterday.

The police handed the kidnapped child to his family.[File photo]

The police launched their sweep between Jan 11 and 26 following mounting worries about kidnappings, Deng Guangsheng, deputy director of the local police's criminal investigation department, said in a press briefing.

Many parents in the city grew increasingly worried after rumors spread over dozens of student kidnappings that occurred since last October.

In their scams, suspects tried fooling their victims into paying ransoms for children whom they did not actually kidnap.

But local police confirmed there were three kidnapping cases in a month starting from October, when two children were killed and six suspects arrested.

The arrests also marked a major step in national efforts to clamp down on kidnapping cases, after central authorities announced a crackdown on the crimes targeting children and their parents.

Police in Guangdong, Henan, Hubei, Qinghai and Shaanxi provinces have also outlined major plans to prevent child kidnappings.

Similarly, more severe penalties for the crime are being meted out.

On Thursday, two courts in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, sentenced 25 people to death in separate trials in nine kidnapping cases, according to Xinhua News Agency.

In one case handed down by the Municipal Intermediate People's Court of Guangzhou, one of three defendants was given the death penalty, while jail terms of 10 and 12 years were given to the other two.

The family of the case's victim, who died at the hands of the defendants, will receive compensation of more than 150,000 yuan (US$22,000).

In another case, two kidnappers held an 11-year-old child for three days for ransom. One of the kidnappers was subsequently jailed 11 years, while the other one was jailed eight years.

The Guangzhou's Municipal Intermediate People's Court and the People's Court of Zengcheng, a suburb of Guangzhou, also handed out jail terms of up to 20 years for 26 other people in similar cases.