by Maryvonne Gray
It’s being described as a ‘very typical’ case of insurance fraud in Vietnam but cutting off two limbs in order to claim an insurance payout would be seen as extreme by most people.
Vietnamese woman ‘Ly Thi N’ originally claimed to have been hit by a train, but now she has reportedly admitted to having paid a friend NZ$3,000 to sever her limbs, according to bbc.com.
Police say the 30-year-old, whose business is said to be struggling, paid to have her foot and part of her arm cut off in order to trigger a claim of more than NZ$150,000 from her insurance company.
A supposed bystander, ‘Doan Van D’, the same person who did the cutting, had called an ambulance after ‘finding’ the injured woman on a Hanoi railroad.
Pictures published by the People’s Police Newspaper of Vietnam showed the woman three months later with her wounds healed.
The unusual case has led to heated discussion on social media in Vietnam.
Facebook user Ly Phan posted: “A very typical case of insurance fraud. The kind of joke that only happens in Vietnam.
“Lost 50 million, 1 hand, 1 leg, and now you are at risk to go to jail. No benefit at all.”
While some users decried the woman for such a dangerous move, others questioned how desperate she must have been.
“She may be going bankrupt or urgently need money to do something like that. It is never easy to cheat insurance companies,” Thanh Phuong Qyunh Le said.
Another, Hoa Nguyen, said sympathetically: “How destitute must a person be to do such a thing?”
Police have reportedly dropped the criminal investigation against both suspects, a local newspaper reported.
Le Van Luan, of the Hanoi Bar Association, told the BBC that it would be difficult to find the appropriate law to charge the pair with under the penal code.
“We need a new article for this kind of fraud,” he said. “Her self-harm is horrible and extremely rare.”
