Police and local education authorities are probing a private kindergarten where parents of a three-year-old girl accused a young female teacher of molesting their daughter by putting a kidney bean into her vagina.

Gelin Shuangyang Kindergarten in Yangpu District,Shanghai.[ File photo ]

The parents yesterday protested at the Gelin Shuangyang Kindergarten in Yangpu District, demanding an explanation.

The parents claimed they took the girl for an emergency surgery to remove the fingertip-size bean from her vagina last Tuesday, four days after it was inserted.

"Miss Lin put the bean into my body," the three-year-old girl nicknamed Niu Niu told her parents. Lin, 25, is the girl's teacher.

Police started the investigation last week. The kindergarten told police the surveillance camera tape was "automatically deleted" and the girl is too young to be a witness, said the girl's father, Qin Lin.

Kindergarten officials apologized to the family last week, begging them not to expose the incident to the media by promising to give them a response in time, said Qin.

According to Qin, the little girl told a plainclothes policeman that most of her classmates were out on the playground on May 11 while she was playing with a few children in the classroom. Lin then told the girl that they were going to play a private game and she put the kidney bean into her vagina, Niu Niu told the policeman.

Her face turned pale when talking about Miss Lin, and she screamed, "Bad woman!" and hid herself behind a desk, Qin said.

A woman surnamed Mei, a friend of the girl's parents, told Shanghai Daily that she was shocked to see such a big bean that had been taken out of the girl's vagina.

A bag of such kidney beans were found on a desk in the kindergarten's corridor, Mei said.

An official surnamed Xie with the kindergarten told the media that they would negotiate with the parents.

Previously, the school authority told the parents they were trying to protect the little girl and also the teacher, who is going to get married, the parents said.

The parents said that so far Lin hasn't directly responded to the incident as she always avoided conversation or even eye contact with them.

"When she paid a visit to the little girl at the hospital, she was just there, not speaking a word or even taking a look at the family," said Mei.

She said Lin cried to the police during the investigation and said, "I'd rather choose to die than admit to have molested the kid."