Calcutta, Nov. 3: Calcutta High Court today directed the Bengal government to pay Rs 5 lakh to a widow whose son had died in a police station lock-up 26 years ago.

The money, to be paid within a month along Padmarani Thakur’s litigation costs — Rs 10,000 — should be realised from “the policemen responsible for Kamal’s death”, a division bench of Justices B. Bhattacharya and P.S. Bannerjee said.

These police officials have already served seven years of rigorous imprisonment for killing Kamal, a railway employee, inside Howrah’s Golabari police station.

On February 27, 1980, police picked up Kamal from his home for his alleged connection with an outlawed political outfit.

The same night, the then police station officer-in-charge, a sub-inspector and an assistant sub-inspector tortured Kamal to death.

The police declared that Kamal had jumped from the roof of the police station in a bid to escape and died. Then chief minister Jyoti Basu had supported the police statement in the Assembly.

Kamal’s father Sailendra Thakur then lodged a complaint against the three policemen with the Howrah sessions judge. Hearing both sides, the sessions judge declared that the police had no hand in Kamal’s death.

Sailendra moved the high court against the Howrah judge’s order.

The high court overturned the earlier verdict and held the police officers guilty. The trio was jailed for 10 years.

The convicts then moved the Supreme Court, where their conviction was upheld but the sentence reduced to seven years.

“Both Sailendra and one of Kamal’s co-prisoners, who said in the court that he was killed by the police, met with accidental deaths. My client is sure that the police were also responsible for these deaths,” said Padmarani’s lawyer Rabindranath Bag.

After her husband’s death in 2003, Padmarani moved the high court demanding compensation for her son’s death.

Her lawyer argued that Kamal was a railway employee and would have earned Rs 32 lakh during his service period. “So the government should be asked to pay Rs 32 lakh to my client.”

The court today said that though Kamal would have earned Rs 32 lakh during his service period, he would have also spent some of the money. “So, we are directing the state to pay Rs 5 lakh to the petitioner,” the judges said.