A prisoner who converted to Buddhism while serving a life sentence for murder has today won a High Court victory allowing him to use an incense burner to help him with his meditations.

Robert Shreeve, who has served 10 of the minimum 20 years he must do, had been disciplined for having the incense burner in his cell because it was deemed a “sharpened” instrument.

A fellow prisoner who was already a Buddhist inmate gave Shreeve the bamboo incense holder to help him in his new-found faith. In Buddhism, incense is offered to enhance ethical behaviour. A burner is also a symbol for smell, one of the five “qualities of enjoyment”, or five senses in the West.

Shreeve’s burner was in the shape of a lotus, the flower associated with Buddhism which symbolises the path to enlightenment.

But the High Court heard that the prison authorities had punished Shreeve, a Category B inmate, in May 2005 on the grounds that the incense holder was “a sharpened stabbing implement”. Half of his inmate’s earnings were stopped for 14 days.

Shreeve said in a statement: “As I’ve lately taken up Buddhism, a fellow Buddhist inmate offered me the use of an incense holder which I accepted and thought no more of.”

Deputy Governor Martin Farquhar said the incense holder was “clearly narrowed to a long point at the top. It could have inflicted quite a serious injury”.

But Mr Justice Munby ruled there were fatal errors in the way Shreeve was charged and the finding of guilt must be quashed.

The judge said: “If the charge against the claimant had been unauthorised possession of a sharp object, namely a pointed incense holder, the claimant would have been rightly convicted and he could have no possible complaint.”

But the charge against Shreeve had been based on the proposition that the Buddhist meditation aid was in fact “a sharpened stabbing implement formed from a bamboo incense holder,” and the prisoner was “in possession of something which had been turned into a stabbing implement”.

To find Shreeve guilty the prison authorities had to prove beyond reasonable doubt “not merely that that was in fact the nature of the otherwise innocuous artefact, but also that the claimant knew that that was its nature.”

During the recent hearing which led to the High Court ruling Nick Moss, a case worker with the Community Law Project, said Shreeve was entitled under human rights laws to have items in his cell to help him express his religion, including an incense holder to aid his meditation rituals.

Although he had admitted possession of the bamboo object, it had not been sharpened by him or any other prisoner and the lotus petal was sharp “simply because that was its form”.

No-one had suggested Shreeve had intended to misuse it or that he had sharpened it.

Gemma White, appearing for the Home Secretary, said: “Whether or not Mr Shreeve sharpened the burner himself, he was well aware he was not allowed to have anything sharp in his possession, including a potential stabbing implement which could inflict serious injury.”