A pest control worker accused by the Mamata Banerjee government of conspiring to set Writers' Buildings ablaze was acquitted by a city court on Monday.

"Hope my nightmare ends here," Jyotirmoy Nandi, 51, told Metro from his home in Serampore, Hooghly, a day after the chief metropolitan magistrate pronounced him not guilty.

Jyotirmoy had spent 100-odd days over almost three years either appearing in court or lining up outside lawyers' chambers in his quest for justice.

He had been arrested by Hare Street police on November 30, 2013, a day after some PWD employees reported smelling kerosene on the floor of a room of the home publication department. Assistant engineer Chandan Mandal had lodged the police complaint, in which he said: "I became scared and presumed that unknown miscreant/miscreants would attempt to set the home publication department on fire to destroy or damage important documents and properties."

Jyotirmoy's arrest came after the then home secretary Basudeb Banerjee - he is now the chief secretary - lauded the police for "foiling a plot to set Writers' ablaze".

Since the police failed to come out with any evidence to support the allegation, they were forced to drop the charge of "mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy a house" and some allied offences had to be dropped from the chargesheet.

But the attempt to jail Jyotirmoy continued. He was charged with an offence under Section 285 of the Indian Penal Code, which pertains to "negligent conduct with respect to fire or combustible matter". The maximum punishment for this offence is six months in jail, but the police failed to prove this in court.

Jyotirmoy is the breadwinner of his four-member family. After his arrest and trial, the family struggled to earn enough for two meals a day as he lost one contract after another. "Who would want to let a man accused of trying to attack the government inside their home?" he said.

Hope is the only thing that kept Jyotirmoy going for three years. "Every day that I appeared in court during my trial, I would touch my father's feet before leaving home. He was worried about my fate and would ask when my ordeal would be over," Jyotirmoy recounted. "He (Biswanath) took ill because he always used to think what would happen if the state government proved me guilty in court."

Jyotirmoy's biggest regret is that his father did not live to see him acquitted. Biswanath died one-and-a-half months ago.

Jyotirmoy had been hired by Bismay Roy, registrar in the home publication department, to spray insecticide in the office. He had been doing the job for six years.

A whiff of kerosene on a floor at Writers' changed his life. Suspicious PWD staff informed the police, who alerted Nabanna. Within an hour, the then home secretary went public with a conspiracy theory.

Jyotirmoy's lawyer Syed Shahid Imam said the police were forced to admit that the charges mentioned in the FIR were all "false".