A Chinese teenager was allegedly beaten to death at a boot camp for troubled youths that his mother had lured him to attend by promising he was going to study IT, state media said Thursday.

Chen Shi, 16, died two days after enrolling in Beiteng School in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan province, having been beaten up when he refused to run during training, the Beijing Times reported.

According to witnesses, an instructor -- helped by two others -- beat him with a plastic pipe, handcuffs and a wooden baton when he refused to run.

The incident comes amid controversy over China's hundreds of boot camps that aim to discipline unruly youths or wean them off web addictions.

In August last year, the beating death of a teenage boy enrolled by his parents at an Internet addiction camp provoked outrage across the country.

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