It seems that destiny has played a joke with Zhu Xiaojuan, a mother in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality who lost a son and seemingly found him three years later, only to meet her real lost son 26 years later, Beijing News reported.

On June 10, 1992, Zhu's son Panpan, who was 15 months old, was taken away by his nanny and never came back.

During the three years afterwards, Zhu Xiaojuan and her husband Cheng Xiaoping went through Guangdong, Hunan, Fujian, Yunnan and Guizhou, looking for their son. Learning that kidnapped children are usually sold to the countryside and mountainous areas, they put up notices on newspapers in rural areas time and time again.

In the winter of 1995, the couple went on to Henan to search for their son with a borrowed loan of 30,000 yuan. A police officer in Anyang city told them that a batch of children had been rescued from Lankao county, and suggested they send their son's photo to check.

Police in Lankao told them there was a child similar to Panpan in age and appearance and hoped they could identify him face to face.

Zhu Xiaojuan didn't feel like the child was her son, but her husband was excited. They decided to take a paternity test.

At that time, most institutions that are qualified to conduct paternity tests belong to judicial organs. According to jurisprudent Liu Changsong, in the 1990s, public security bureaus, procuratorates and courts all had affiliated accrediting bodies and provided services.

Zhu Xiaojuan chose the closest qualified institution -- Henan High People's Court -- and left their blood samples for testing.

Forty days later, Zhu received a report from Henan High People's Court, saying the DNA patterns of the couple and the kidnapped child conform to the genetic laws of Mendel.

On Jan 15, 1996, Henan High People's Court concluded that the kidnapped child had a biological parent-child relationship with the couple based on the report.

The family came back to Chongqing and held a welcome back ceremony for the lost-and-found child.

In January 2018, Zhu received a call from a media outlet in Chongqing and was asked if she had lost a boy in 1992. A woman named He Xiaoping told the media that she once took a boy away from a family in Chongqing when she was a nanny 26 years ago.

According to the nanny, she gave birth to two babies, but both had died. There was a custom in her hometown that if she brought another person’s baby back, she could have a healthy baby.

In the year that the nanny kidnapped Panpan, she gave birth to a girl, so Panpan's mission was completed.

The nanny said she planned to send Panpan back, but was afraid that she would be held accountable and spend years in prison, so she didn't do it. Recently, she watched a TV show on searching for lost relatives, and believed that she had passed the 20-year statute of limitations on criminal prosecution, so she decided to give the child back, now named Liu Jinxin.

On Jan 15, the Chongqing public security bureau took blood samples from Zhu Xiaojuan and Liu Jinxin. Testing showed that the two conform to a parental genetic relationship. On Jan 22, Zhu and her lost-and-found son did paternity testing and was told that they are not parent and child.

Liu Jinxin's life was miserable. After the nanny took him back to her hometown, he was placed in her relative's home. No one cared about him. He dropped out of middle school. In the past 10 years, he had been to many places to do temporary jobs.

The lost-and-found son went to college and does financial work.

After Zhu Xiaojuan's weird experience went public, the Henan High People's Court sent three workers to communicate with her in late March. They expressed the court's apology and told her that the court had formed a team to investigate the case.

At first, Zhu didn't receive media interviews, believing that it will be a happy ending if Henan High People's Court can figure out what had happened 26 years ago and clarify their responsibility.

On June 12, staff from Henan High People's Court met Zhu for the second time, telling her that the court can provide mental compensation of about 50,000 yuan.

A staff who had attended the meeting said on July 5 that there was no illegal or irregular problem during the paternity test in 1995, and the mistake "might be a technical matter".

The meeting ended unhappily. Zhu told a reporter from Beijing News that, a staff member said, "It's the same that you've raised another person's child. The child that you've taken care of for over 20 years can also take care of you when you are old." She didn't think this could express an apology for what happened.

Zhu wanted to have a look at the investigation report by the court, but was rejected. So she decided to sue the court.

However, filing a lawsuit against a court is not easy, because there are no previous cases that serve as precedents, according to Zhu's legal team.