Two Beijing schoolgirls have been condemned to six and three years in jail for stabbing a classmate and leaving her on a railway track in the hopes that she would be crushed by a train, reports said on Friday.

The two girls, aged 15 and 16 and not identified by name, stabbed their classmate 17 times in February last year, apparently because she had badmouthed them "behind their backs".

Their victim was still breathing, so they dragged her to a rail line, expecting a train would pass by and "finish her off", but she managed to crawl to safety and survived, according to reports.

The two young would-be killers received their sentences at a Beijing court on Thursday, apparently unfazed by the negative attention they were receiving.

They had applied make-up for the occasion and smiled to each other when the sentence was read out, saying they had expected at least eight years imprisonment.

One of the girls said she had wanted to become a police officer and had learned the trick of placing a victim on the railroad from a crime show on TV.

(Agencies via China Daily June 11, 2005)