BEIJING: A Chinese mother was held down while a lethal injection was given to her seven-month-old foetus, after she failed to fill in an application form to have a second child.

A photograph showing 23-year-old Feng Jianmei lying on a hospital bed, with the corpse of her unborn daughter on a plastic sheet beside her, has spread virally through the internet and forced the Chinese government to admit an illegal infanticide.

The photograph, taken by her cousin A San was posted on the internet on Monday, a week after local communist party cadres in Ankang, Shaanxi province, forcibly aborted Mrs Feng's child.

Mrs Feng and her 29-year-old husband, Deng Jiayuan, already have a child, a six-year-old girl. But, as farmers, they were entitled by Chinese law to have a second baby with the permission of their local family planning bureau.

When Mrs Feng was three months pregnant, officials said they visited her and asked her to fill in an application form and to change her hukou, a Chinese registration permit, to say she lived in the countryside.

It is not clear why Mrs Feng failed to fill in the forms and transfer her residence. She has complained on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, that she was not warned of the consequences until it was too late. But as her pregnancy progressed, local officials offered her family a deal: pay 40,000 yuan to smooth the bureaucracy over.

When the couple said they did not have the money, Mrs Feng was taken from her home on May 30 by more than 20 officials and ransomed, her husband said. The officials held her for three days, apparently sending threatening text messages to members of her family, before giving the foetus a lethal injection on June 2.

''It should not be a cent less than that [40,000 yuan],'' read one text message, allegedly sent by Yuan Fang, a family planning official, to Mr Deng's sister, Deng Yan. A photograph of the message on what appears to be a smartphone has been posted by the family to HSW.cn, a local Shaanxi internet portal by the family.

''I told your father this already and he said he did not have the money, so we did not have a choice. It is you guys that have been careless,'' the message continued. Mr Deng said he had tried to raise the money until the last minute, but had failed.

''At the hospital they held her down,'' said Mr Deng to All Girls Allowed, a Christian organisation in the United States that campaigns against the one-child policy. ''They covered her head with a pillowcase. She could not do anything because they were restraining her.'' He said his wife had tried to kill herself after the abortion.

Mrs Feng told All Girls Allowed she could ''feel the baby jumping around inside me all the time, but then she went still''.

Mr Deng declined to comment further on the case, but said the government's attitude was now ''supportive''. Officials were at the family's home yesterday. The deputy head of Ankang town, Yu Yanmei, visited the family on Wednesday.

Mrs Yuan, at the local family planning bureau, claimed the 40,000 yuan had been a ''deposit'' which was to be returned to the family once Mrs Deng had transferred her household registration. Angry Chinese internet users compared the case to the atrocities inflicted by Japanese soldiers on Chinese victims during the war. By Thursday, more than a million comments had been left on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, about the abortion.

Authorities have now admitted that the abortion was illegal. Late Thursday, three officials, including the head of Zhenping county's family planning bureau and the head of the Zengjiazhen township government, were suspended. Ankang city government has apologised to the woman after a preliminary investigation found officials violated national and provincial regulations, according to Xinhua news agency.