Calcutta, April 4: The high court has overturned the murder convictions of a man and a woman sentenced to jail for life and asked the government to pay them compensation.

The government will have to pay Salil Das, of Singur, Rs 1 lakh and Mahela Bibi, a homemaker from Champadanga in Hooghly, Rs 50,000.

The high court based its ruling on the ground that witness Sufal Sarkar, a journalist, had influenced police to make false statements before the trial court.

“The trial court’s judgment was delivered on the basis of untrue statements by investigating officers who had been influenced by Sufal Sarkar, a journalist, residing in Howrah’s Bagnan, in whose house the murder was committed,” the court said.

The two had been accused of murdering Mahela’s husband Sheikh Fakir in 2002. Mahela was released on bail by the high court in 2004 while Salil is still languishing in jail. A copy of the high court judgment was issued to state authorities today.

The Howrah additional district sessions judge had sentenced the two in May 2003.

But the division bench of Justices G.C. Gupta and K.K. Prasad said the two had been “implicated falsely in the murder case and are under tremendous mental pressure and social agony due to faults committed by a state agency.

“The agony they have un- dergone during the last six years cannot be compensated with money. The state is being directed to pay Rs 1 lakh to Sa-lil and Rs 50,000 to Mahela as a balm of sympathy on their agony”.

The division bench also directed the state authorities to appoint a police officer not below the rank of deputy superintendent to conduct a fresh inquiry into the murder.