FUZHOU, Feb. 17 -- A man acquitted after spending eight years in prison in east China's Fujian Province has received 1.14 million yuan (186,000 U.S. dollars) compensation from the state.

Fuzhou Municipal Intermediate People's Court on Sunday ruled that Nian Bin, 39, should be paid 589,000 yuan for loss of personal freedom and another 550,000 yuan for mental suffering, the court said on Tuesday.

In August 2014, Fujian Higher People's Court overturned grocery shop owner Nian Bin's 2008 conviction for murder, citing insufficient evidence. This was the final ruling after three guilty verdicts and subsequent appeals.

On the evening of July 27, 2006, four people in Fuzhou's Pingtan county, three of them children, fell ill while having supper. Two of the children died. Police believed their neighbor Nian Bin, then 30, was responsible because he was not on good terms with the victims' family.

The first verdict came in February, 2008, when the Intermediate People's Court in Fuzhou sentenced Nian to death.

In December, a court in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region ruled that the parents of a man who was wrongly convicted and executed in 1996 should receive state compensation of more than two million yuan.