Guo Guifang's mother cries and stands with support where a woman's corpse was found at Feixiang, North China's Hebei Province on January 6, 2014. Photo: VCG

The bones thought to be those of a woman who has been missing for 29 years were dug out of an abandoned well recently in Handan, North China's Hebei Province, Beijing News Opinion WeChat official account reported on Monday. 

The remains are thought to be those of Guo Guifang, 32, who went missing after her father reported local corruption in a rural election in 1982.  

Guo disappeared on June 16, 1990. Her family immediately reported her disappearance to the local police of Feixiang district at Handan. 

Three years later, a woman's corpse was found in a dry well two kilometers away from Guo's house. Guo's father, Guo Jianmin, believed that the body was his daughter's. 

However, when the family went to identify the body at the local police station, they found that the body had disappeared. 

In October 2016, Guo's family requested that the local public security bureau (PSB) of Feixiang disclose information on the judicial identification of the body, but did not receive a response.

The family then filed a lawsuit with the court on the grounds of administrative omission. Although they won the case, the local PSB refused to carry out the required actions while denying they ever filed a case for Guo's disappearance. The local PSB insisted that the case had exceeded the 20-year limit for prosecution. 

It is not known whether Guo's disappearance is connected to her father's anti-corruption actions. 

The local PSB told the Global Times that they had no knowledge about this case on Tuesday.

The case drew attention after a man's body was found under a high-school playground by police in Central China's Hunan Province on June 20. The man, who had been missing for more than 16 years, was confirmed to have been a member of the school's faculty in charge of supervising engineering quality in 2003. The case drew huge attention in China as the public, media and legal experts demanded that the relevant departments take responsibility. 

Global Times