Student expelled for spiking drink

A student from Shanghai International Studies University has been expelled after he was found to have spiked a female student's drink, according to an announcement released by the university on Wednesday.

According to the victim, she found that the coffee she had left on a desk in the library tasted strange after she returned from lunch. After spitting out what she drank and pouring away the rest, she reported the incident to the university's security bureau, which checked closed-circuit television footage and discovered that the culprit, surnamed Yin, had added something to the beverage.

Yin, 21, was detained for questioning by the police that afternoon. Following a thorough examination at a hospital, the victim has been assessed to be in good health, according to a post on Weibo by the Public Security Bureau in Songjiang district.

According to the security bureau, Yin has confessed to spiking the drink with taurine effervescent tablets he had purchased online. The tablets are falsely touted as a form of sexual stimulant on some online sales platforms.

The tablet's main ingredients include taurine, naturally found in food like meat and added to energy drinks. However, it isn't a sexual stimulant, a local pharmacist told Shanghai-based news portal ThePaper.cn.

The motivations behind Yin's actions have yet to be revealed and the security bureau said that the investigation is ongoing.

In light of the incident, the university has pledged to better promote moral behavior to the students and strictly deal with any violations of school rules or discipline in order to ensure a safe environment on campus.

The case has attracted much discussion online.

"Whatever he put in the drink, even if it was just sugar, it's still terrible," commented a netizen named Haishali on Weibo.

"Virtues are important, as they are the basic qualities of a person before he or she excels in other fields," posted another netizen.

Some recalled former drink spiking cases as well. For example, a student from Tsinghua University in Beijing suffered severe brain damage after she was poisoned with thallium in 1994 and 1995 while studying chemistry.

In 2014, a medical student at Fudan University in Shanghai was sentenced to death for murdering his roommate with poison in April 2013.

Drink and food spiking is usually hard to notice, but Wang Xiaoyan, a lawyer of Beijing Yongzhe Law Firm, said people can protect themselves by developing habits including taking drinks and food with them when leaving their seats, instead of leaving them unattended in public places.

"If you were to leave food or drink unattended because of an emergency, you should throw it away just to be safe," said Wang. "If you notice anything out of the ordinary it should be reported to the police."

Given that the drug was bought online in the latest case, authorities should strengthen supervision over e-commerce platforms and crack down on the sale of illicit and misleading products, she added.