Chinese police freed 10,621 women and 5,896 children who had been abducted for human trafficking as of September 6,since the Ministry of Public Security launched a crackdown on trafficking the crime in April last year.

In the campaign, police nationwide apprehended 2,398 human trafficking gangs and handled 13,500 such cases, said the ministry in a statement on Sunday.

Further, the police put 15,673 suspects under criminal detention and handed out administrative penalties on 1,518 people, it said.

In addition to the tough crackdown, the police have stepped up measures to return the children who have been trafficked to their biological parents, including building a database that collects the DNA of those children who may have fallen victims to human trafficking and their parents.

The database had helped 813 children to find their biological parents through DNA matching.