BEIJING

 Chinese authorities have announced that 27 officials were penalized over the wrongful conviction of a teenager who was executed for rape and murder two decades ago.

The China Daily reported Monday that 11 former police officers and seven former officials with the people's procuratorate in the northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region were among those punished.

Huugjilt, 18, was found guilty of raping and murdering a woman in a public toilet in regional capital Hohhot in April 1996, despite telling police he had heard a cry for help before coming across a woman’s body.

He was sentenced to death and executed two months later. In 2005, a convicted serial rapist and murderer who allegedly killed 10 women confessed to the crimes.

Zhao Zhihong, dubbed the “smiling killer” in local media, was handed a death sentence last year.

Local authorities revealed in the statement released late Sunday that a former deputy director at a security bureau in Hohhot, Feng Zhiming, was among the 27 penalized and may face criminal charges on suspicion of job-related crimes.

He had been promoted for handling Huugjilt's case, of which he was in charge, in a timely manner.

The Daily reported that administrative penalties such as records of demerit and admonitions were issued to the other 26 officials, who included the former chief of the bureau Feng worked at and the former chief procurator of Hohhot.

Another five previously served in the region's higher people's court, and three in Hohhot’s intermediate people's court.

Huugjilt’s was posthumously overturned in Dec. 2014, before which his parents had been petitioning China’s supreme court and the region's higher court.