Several Chinese police officers are reported to have been suspended or sacked after they left a three-year-old girl to starve to death at home following the arrest of her mother.
The woman, who was detained for theft, asked police officers to contact a relative to look after the child, but they failed to do so.
Media reports of the case, in the south-western city of Chengdu, have prompted public outrage.
The incident follows a similar outcry over the case of a man who was beaten to death while mistakenly detained by the authorities in the southern city of Guangzhou in March.
According to local media, two deputy directors of the Jintang county Chengjiao police station asked officers to contact the child's aunt, and when the officers failed to reach her, they in turn asked a police station in Tuanjie village, where the child lived, to help.
That station reportedly assigned the task to a police cadet, but the cadet also failed to get in touch with the aunt, and forgot to inform the police station.
Li Siyi, who was left alone for two weeks, died of hunger and dehydration.
No-one realised she was dead until neighbours smelled her decomposing body.
Chengdu's prosecutors have detained the two police station deputy directors, and put the director and another deputy director on mandatory leave, according to the China News Service (CNS).
The director of Tuanjie village has been sacked and the cadet expelled from his police academy, CNS said.
The BBC's Francis Markus says the girl's fate has added to a growing chorus of discussion in China's media and internet chat rooms about police misconduct.
"It's too terrible, but how many more such incidences have not been exposed?" one person wrote on the Sohu.com portal's chatroom, according to the French news agency AFP.
"Some things are even more frightening than Sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)," another reportedly wrote.
Media role
Similar outrage followed the beating to death earlier this year of Sun Zhigang, a graduate who was detained in a holding centre for illegal migrants because he did not have the right papers on him.
This week the government published new rules covering the management and control of detention centres.
Analysts say the media are playing an increasing role in highlighting such abuses.
But our correspondent says the trend toward greater openness is also counter-balanced by regular sackings of journalists who are seen to be going too far, and the suppression of publications which venture into sensitive political territory.
Many of the comments in the internet chat rooms regarding Li Siyi's death were reportedly deleted a few hours after they were posted.
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