Man executed for drowning debtor

A man who was convicted of illegally detaining and killing his debtor by putting the victim in an iron cage and throwing him into a lake was executed on Tuesday.

The Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court in Zhejiang province ordered the execution of Hu Fangquan after his death sentence was approved by the Supreme People's Court, the Hangzhou court said in a statement published online.

Hu, a native of Wenzhou in Zhejiang, was found by the court to have forcibly taken Zhang Hong, a businessman from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region who owed Hu at least 10 million yuan ($1.44 million), from a hotel in Hangzhou with the help of several other accomplices on June 10, 2012.