Death by drinking boiled water

喝开水死 (hē kāi shuǐ (sǐ)): death from drinking boiled water

“He drank some boiled water and suddenly fell ill.”

Competition for the lamest excuse for a prison inmate's death. In first place is “drank boiled water,” in second place is “played hide and go seek,” and in third place is “hung himself with his own shoelace.”

This term comes from the suspicious explanation given for prison inmate Wang Yahui's death in February of 2010—that he had died of an acute disease after drinking a cup of boiling water. After seeing Wang's mutilated body, which had obvious injuries to the chest, arms, head, and genitals, his family had difficulty believing the explanation given by police. The Henan provincial public security department eventually admitted that Wang had died from police torture.

This incident follows a pattern of similarly suspicious and unlikely official explanations for the causes of inmate deaths: “ death by hide and seek,” "death from hanging," “death from suffocation by quilt,” “death by slipping and falling,” “death by nightmare,” and “death from being overly excited.” (see here (English) and here (Chinese)).

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