Heartless 40-year-old man inpregnated a 12-year-old girl claiming to be his 20-year-old wife, brought her to the hospital for examination

Footage of the teenage pregnant girl

A man has been arrested after taking his pregnant 'wife' to hospital claiming she is 20, only for staff to claim the 'woman' was no older than 12.

The husband who is 40-year-old man accompanied the teenage wife including a woman who claimed to be the mother-in-law.

The three arrived at the Xuzhou City Central Hospital, in East China's Jiangsu Province, claiming that the girl was three months pregnant and that she needed a routine test to confirm that her foetus was healthy.

The pregnant teenage girl

The husband and mother-in-law said the wife was 20 years old, but medics immediately alerted local authorities when they found the young patient to be more like a schoolgirl than a "woman".

Her pregnancy scan

Doctors who tried to question the girl were unable to get any answers from her, as she did not speak any Mandarin.

One of the staff said: "It's obvious she is just a child, and certainly not anywhere near 20 years old."

Their suspicion is also said to have angered the husband, who was quoted as saying: "I took her here to be examined - just do your job. Stop asking so many questions."

The Chinese police have not been able to identify the little girl as she does not posses a Chinese citizenship and where she is from is still unclear.

The authority believe she may have been purchased from a neighboring country like Vietnam because the Chinese are known for purchasing foreign brides from other Asia countries around their borders, currently further investigation is going on to unravel misery surrounding her origin.  

Speaking at the time, child rights activist Kriti Bharti, 28, and founder of Saarthi Trust, a charity for the welfare of child brides and other vulnerable children said: "My heart goes out to these little children trapped in this tragedy."

The legal age for girls and boys to marry in India is 18 and 21 respectively but according to UNICEF India is home to a third of the world's total child brides.