BEIJING - A COURT in central China has freed a karaoke bar waitress who fatally stabbed a Communist Party official, saying she acted in self-defence against the man who allegedly cornered her in a hotel spa and demanded sex, state-run media said on Tuesday.

The young defendant has been popularly portrayed as a folk hero who lashed out against injustice.

The Datong County People's Court exempted Ms Deng Yujiao, 21, from punishment for the crime of intentional injury because she was acting in self-defence, the official People's Daily newspaper said in a brief report on its website.

The report said the court ruled that Ms Deng had limited criminal responsibility and also took into account that she turned herself in to the police after using a fruit knife to stab 43-year-old Mr Deng Guida, who later died. No further details were provided. Calls to the court and her lawyer rang unanswered.

Songs and poems praising the woman have been posted online, while coverage of her case in the entirely state-controlled media has been unusually sympathetic.

Her popularity reflects widespread anger in China over abuse of power by communist cadres, officials and the security forces. A similar public outpouring of sympathy followed the case of a man who confessed to killing six Shanghai police officers in revenge for torture he allegedly suffered while being interrogated about a possibly stolen bike.

Chinese media reported that Deng Guida found the waitress in the laundry room of a bathhouse a few floors below the bar where she worked and demanded sex. When she refused, he allegedly forced her down on a couch and blocked her from leaving. She attacked him with a fruit knife she had in her bag, the report said. Police said she also attacked his colleague, Huang Dezhi, at the hotel in Badong in the central province of Hubei.

Deng Guida, who ran a local government office for business promotion, is not related to the waitress.

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Effulgence: The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.
eg.
The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra.

Aver : 1. To affirm with confidence; to declare in a positive manner, as in confidence of asserting the truth.
2. (Law) To assert, claim, or declare as a fact.
eg.
Between us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood. And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid.

Prestidigitation : Skill in or performance of tricks; sleight of hand.
eg.
He was the man who had sat alone in a room for hundreds and hundreds of hours, his fingers manipulating cards and coins until he had learned and could perfectly reproduce every form of prestidigitation found in books of magic lore.

Life's a bitch,
'Cause if it was a slut,
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