The death sentence still hangs over Hasrat Alam’s neck, but he can breathe a little easier now, in the confines of a general cell larger than the dark, dank 6ftx4ft room that has been his home for three years.

Calcutta High Court on Tuesday told the Presidency Correctional Home that Alam, one of the six men awarded capital punishment for helping Aftab Ansari mount the 2002 attack on the American Center, should never have been kept in a condemned cell.

The court’s verdict came in response to a petition filed by Alam’s counsel, Jayanta Narayan Chatterjee.

“My client was implicated in the case on the charge of printing the fake blue book and other papers of the taxi which Aftab (Ansari) and the others used while attacking the American Center. For the past three years, he has been languishing in a very small and dark room of the jail.”

Citing a Supreme Court ruling in an earlier case, Chatterjee said the jail authorities had no right to keep Alam in a condemned cell until the high court upheld the trial court’s judgment. Ansari is the only one among the seven persons convicted in the case to be kept in a special cell.

The order to shift Alam to a general cell could prompt lawyers representing the other five accomplices of Ansari to ask for similar accommodation for their clients.

The division bench of Justice D.P. Sengupta and Justice P.K. Deb on Wednesday asked the court office to quickly complete the formalities required for it to start hearing the appeals against the death sentence. Ansari and his aides were sentenced on April 26, 2005, more than three years after the attack on the American Center.