Japanese police have arrested the parents of a 33-year-old woman who froze to death after she was kept in a tiny, unheated room for some 15 years, local media reports said on Wednesday.

The woman was reported to have weighed only 19 kilograms at death.

The parents of the woman said they had put her in the 3-square-metre room when she was about 16 or 17 years old because of a mental disability that made her violent.

The pair was arrested after they notified the police of her death.

In order to ensure that the woman’s confinement wouldn’t be noticed, the 55-year-old father and his 53-year-old wife installed about 10 security cameras around the wooden fence-enclosed house in Osaka.

The parents had the small room specially built onto the house, which featured a door that could be opened only from the outside.

According to media reports, it was outfitted with a primitive toilet and a pipe, which the woman used to drink water from an outside tank.

(dpa/NAN)