2011-01-15 08:57

BEIJING - A man sentenced to life in prison for evading road tolls has been granted a retrial, judicial authorities said on Friday, after the severity of the sentence caused a huge online outcry.

Shi Jianfeng, a self-employed driver in Yuzhou of Central China's Henan province, was sentenced on Dec 21, after being found guilty of using a fabricated military driving license and fake military plates on his trucks to evade tolls totaling 3.68 million yuan ($558,000).

But the Pingdingshan Intermediate People's Court, which sentenced Shi, said in a statement on Friday that as the case had "triggered the media's attention and heated debate", authorities had subsequently questioned Shi again.

Shi now claimed to have been manipulated by a relative, and as this "new evidence" might have changed the outcome of the case, the court had decided to hold a retrial, said Liu Penghua, director of the political department of the court on Friday.

Tollgate records showed Shi's two trucks, transporting sand and gravel, avoided paying tolls 2,362 times in the nine months between May 2008 and January 2009. The average toll each time would have been 1,558 yuan.

Shi said in court he earned about 200,000 yuan from the transportation of the sand and gravel.

Aside from the life sentence the court also fined Shi 2 million yuan and deprived him of his political rights for life.

The harsh sentence sparked a storm of criticism in blogs and online forums, with many netizens hitting out at the exorbitant road fees and noting that Shi's income was far smaller than the road costs he would typically have incurred.

Excessive tolls are due to the "frequent and extravagant" overloading of trucks, said Xi Zongming, general manager of the Pingdingshan Branch of the Henan Zhongyuan Expressway Co Ltd.

Netizens welcomed the decision to hold a retrial, with many calling his sentence a travesty of justice.

"Compared to some cases in which officials have pocketed hundreds of millions of yuan, this is not a serious case," one netizen said on the popular sina.com.cn Web portal.

The case highlights the growing power of Web users in China.