A court in China's southern city of Fuzhou ordered compensation of 1.14 million yuan ($182,000) to a former death row prisoner who was acquitted on charges of poisoning two children, state media said on Tuesday.

The rare acquittal of Nian Bin, a former food stall owner who was freed in August after a court in Fujian province found there was insufficient evidence, prompted renewed calls for the abolition of the death penalty in China.

Nian, 39, was accused of poisoning his neighbors with rat poison, leading to the death of two children and injuries to four others in July 2006.

But he said he was tortured into confessing during police interrogations and had pursued his appeals for years, an effort closely watched by human rights lawyers in China and global rights groups.

He was convicted several times and spent 8 years in prison before being acquitted.

The intermediate court made the ruling on Sunday, and on Tuesday announced that Nian "should be paid 589,000 yuan for loss of personal freedom and another 550,000 yuan for mental suffering," the official Xinhua news agency reported.

China's ruling Communist Party has said it aims to prevent "extorting confessions by torture" and halt miscarriages of justice with a "timely correction mechanism", after a series of corruption investigations involving torture outraged the public.

But legal scholars are skeptical about significant change under one-party rule. The government has been silent on establishing an independent judiciary or reining in the police, a powerful agency in China.

Rights groups say China uses capital punishment more than any other country, fanning public concern of irreversible miscarriages of justice.