Actually the evidence was not hard for damaged property, especially for disturbing the railway. Since he was indeed the brain and abetter of this, the charges had fallen on him.
He was not charged for that, wasn't he?
Obviously they did more than that, otherwise he wouldn't be charged with damaging public property. Don't ever underestimate the distructive force of an angery mob.
Read his words carefully. He said that in 2008 and was quoted in《Letter to President Hu Jintao to Stop Harrassment of Advocates for Social Justice》by his then lawyers. 90 or 100 people were the people who were harrassing him in his home town. Those people were involved in the case he was investigating into his villiage local government. I doubt that China could even spare 50 police just to watch over some blind guy as China's police force was very understaffed.
See, that is the whole flaw with this article. The article said that he was under housed arrest in Beijing, but in reality he was in his home villiage Dongshigu Villiage where Christian Bale actually did a decumentary about him called <<Dongshigu Villiage>> in 2011. If you do a google search of that place, you would know how far it is actually from Beijing. The former Chongqing police commissioner and vice mayor Wang Lijun even with all his connections and resources could not even dare to go that far to Beijing to avoid prosecution from Bo Xilai without detection, but rather went to US consulate in nearby Chengdu and wait for people from Beijing to get him there. So again if he was under that much surveilliance and the government is really out to get him, he couldn't have got to beijing by plane, train or highway. One thing was made clear to the public knowledge is that the local officials at Dongshigu Villiage was trying to cut off his contact with outsiders. There is no doubt that there were many wrong doings including the case that Chen had investigated in. The irony here is at villiage level the head of local government was actually elected by local residents democratically.