A Stevenage murderer serving a minimum 35-year jail term for executing three men has been awarded £1,000 compensation after his CDs were damaged by shampoo during a prison move.

District judge Neil Hickman upheld convicted killer Kevan Thakrar’s complaint that guards had deliberately damaged his CDs, also noting damage to a stereo and the loss of four books.

This is Thakrar’s second big compensation payout. In April 2014, the same judge awarded him £815 for damage to items including his nose hair trimmer, alarm clock and stereo, and the loss of personal items.

Along with his brother Miran, Kevan Thakrar – of Lomond Way in Stevenage – was jailed in 2008 for killing three men over a drug deal, and attempting to kill two women.

Keith Cowell, 52, his son Matthew, 17, and Tony Dulieu, 33, were lined up and shot with a sub-machine gun in Bishop’s Stortford in 2007.

Matthew Cowell’s girlfriend, Clare Evans, and a second woman, Christine Jennings, were stabbed after the killers ran out of ammunition. The women, who were targeted because they were witnesses, survived.

The shootings were over the alleged supply of low-quality cocaine.

In 2010, Thakrar stabbed three prison guards with a broken bottle. He admitted the attacks but claimed self defence after ill-treatment and was cleared of the attempted murder of two of the officers and the wounding with intent of the third.