China to retry farmer given life for evading tolls

January 15th, 2011 - 12:45 am ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

Beijing, Jan 14 (THAINDIAN NEWS) A Chinese court has announced that a farmer who was convicted of evading paying tolls will be retried.

The farmer - Shi Jianfeng was sentenced to life imprisonment for failing to pay more than half a million dollars in expressway tolls. The court sentenced him on Tuesday. His political rights in the country were also taken away from him for life.

However the court indicated that because the convicted farmer has named an accomplice, they want to retry the case. According to the court, Shi has revealed that he was manipulated into not paying the tolls.

During the trial, the prosecutors told the court that Shi used faked military identity for his two trucks that he used to carry sand and gravels. The records at the tollgates captured that the two vehicles managed to pass 2,362 times without paying the required amount. The offence was committed between a nine month period.

Averagely, Shi should have paid $236 every time that each of the truck passed. The toll rates in China have often been criticized as been too high but the country’s authorities defend that the move is to protect the country’s highways and discourage excess loading of trucks.

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