A Chinese court has reduced the life sentence of a young man who stabbed four aggressive debt collectors, leaving one dead, to five years in prison on Friday.

Yu, from Liaocheng in the eastern Shandong Province, was charged with intentional injury and sentenced to life in prison in February after he used a knife to attack the debt collectors who restrained Yu and his mother illegally and tormented and humiliated them while demanding a debt be repaid. One of the creditors died from his injuries.

The original verdict has sparked heated debate across China after an explosive report by the Southern Weekly exposed details of the case back in March 2017. 

Millions of readers reposted the story online crying for justice on traditional as well as social media, of what actually happened during the attack and whether the legal process was due.

One of the major contention was to determine whether Yu's offense fell into the category of "self-defense". 

In the first trial, Yu's lawyers had argued for an "excessive defense" verdict which would have featured a much lighter sentence than the "intentional injury" charge convicted on Yu. 

However the Liaocheng Court judged that Yu and his mother were not in a life-threatening situation, given that the recovery agents had not possess any tools that could have been used as weapons and that the police had been dispatched to the scene.

In a statement issued on March 26, China's Supreme People's Procuratorate pledged to process an appeal by Yu’s lawyers to determine whether he was acting in self-defense and investigate possible dereliction of duty by the police officers called to the site.

The Shandong Supreme Court announced its verdict in the appeal case on Friday, saying that Yu acted in self-defence. 

The court reduced the sentence to five years in prison considering confess to the crime and the outrageous insult inflicted upon him and his mother by the debt collectors.

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