A woman in Fuyang, Zhejiang province, was detained for seven days for faking a suicide attempt by pretending to jump into a river, Qianjiang Evening News reported on Wednesday.

The woman, surnamed Dong, 37, often quarreled with her husband recently and made a phone call to her elder brother in the early morning of March 7 saying she was going to kill herself by jumping into a river near her home. Her brother reported her call to police, who found Dong's car and shoes on the riverbank and her clothes in the water. From that early morning until the following night, the police organized many people to search for Dong in the river but they found nothing.

However, in the early morning of March 9, Dong was reported to have appeared on the bank of a river in Taizhou, a city some 300 km from Fuyang, and she told police she had been saved by a fishing boat on the river.

Police asked Dong a number of questions and found many inconsistencies, and at last Dong confessed she did not jump into the river but placed her car, shoes and clothes to make it seem she had done so. She had then asked a friend to drive her to Taizhou, where she pretended to have been saved.

Dong said she faked her attempted suicide in an attempt to teach her husband a lesson. The police detained her as she disrupted the normal working order of the public security organs by faking the attempt.