The wife of a man who died in suspicious circumstances on Saturday night after being detained by police has questioned the official account of her husband's final hours, China Central Television reported yesterday.

According to a police statement posted on Weibo, the victim — 29-year-old Lei Yang — was detained with five other men following a raid on a foot massage parlor in Beijing's Changping District that was suspected of providing sex services.

Lei resisted arrest and tried to flee the scene, at which point he was physically restrained, the statement said.

En route to the police station, he complained of feeling sick and was taken to hospital, police said.

According to a report by The Beijing News, several members of the public witnessed a man running from the massage parlor towards a residential complex about 9:20pm on Saturday.

As he was running, he appealed for help, shouting: "They aren't police. Please keep me. Please drag my feet. Don't let them drag me to the car," the witnesses were quoted as saying.

The report said the unidentified man was being pursued by three men dressed in plain clothes.

Lei's wife — identified only by her surname Wu — told CCTV that she "couldn't accept" the police account and demanded to see the footage from their body cameras.

"Police said when they arrived, my husband just stepped out (of the massage parlor). They said he ran after seeing them, but couldn't get away and was dragged to a police car," she said.

"They said he wouldn't calm down and jumped from the car, and then he had a heart attack."

According to the CCTV report, Lei was admitted to Changping Hospital of Intergrated Chinese and Western Medicine about 10pm, where doctors observed he had bruises on his forehead and a small amount of blood coming from his mouth.

His vital signs were also said to be weak.

Despite receiving emergency treatment, Lei was pronounced dead at 10:55pm, the report quoted doctors as saying, though they did not give a cause of death.

Wu told CCTV that her husband had left home between 8:30pm and 9pm on Saturday, and was supposed to be going to the airport to pick up relatives who were visiting the couple — who'd recently had a baby — from central China's Hunan Province.

About 11pm, the relatives called Wu to say they'd arrived but that Lei hadn't turned up. When she tried to contact her husband, the calls went unanswered, she said.

About 1am on Sunday, she got a phone call from the police and was told Lei was dead. The family went to the hospital and identified him, the CCTV report said.

"Why did nobody answer (Lei's phone) when we tried to contact him? The police should have called back. And we saw many bruises on his body," she said.