The Allahabad High Court has annulled the conviction of Mohammad Ilyas in the 1996 Modinagar–Ghaziabad bus bombing, concluding that prosecutors could not establish his guilt. The division bench of Justice Siddharth and Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra observed that the state had “miserably failed” to demonstrate Ilyas’s role in the alleged plot.
The judges held that the supposed confession attributed to Ilyas and recorded by police officers could not be treated as admissible evidence. They stressed that Section 25 of the Evidence Act clearly bars any confession made before a police official from being used to convict an accused, making the trial court’s reliance on it untenable.
In their order dated November 10, the judges noted that although the 1996 incident was a “terrorist attack” that had horrified the public and taken 18 lives, the court could not overlook the inadequacy of the evidence. The bench said it was compelled to acquit Ilyas because the legal standards required for a conviction were not met.
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The court emphasised in its ruling that investigators had been unable to substantiate the claim that Ilyas had participated in any conspiracy with the other accused. It criticised the trial court for treating an audio cassette—containing a confession reportedly recorded in the presence of police personnel—as credible evidence. Once that material was excluded, the judges said, no proof remained to sustain the conviction.
They also pointed out that the witnesses who were expected to corroborate the alleged extrajudicial confession had either withdrawn their earlier statements or refused to support the prosecution’s version. The bench reiterated that the audio recording could not be admitted under the law. It further stated that the confession attributed to Ilyas by a senior police officer could not be legally proved.
The blast itself occurred on April 27, 1996, moments after a bus travelling from Delhi passed the Modinagar Police Station area in Ghaziabad. The explosion ripped through the front part of the vehicle, killing ten passengers instantly and injuring dozens more. Subsequent forensic analysis showed that a combination of RDX and carbon had been placed beneath the driver’s seat and detonated remotely.
Investigating agencies had alleged that the attack was planned by Abdul Mateen—also called Iqbal—a Pakistani national described as associated with Harkat-ul-Ansar. They claimed he had acted with Ilyas and a third man, Tasleem, and asserted that Ilyas had been influenced while in Jammu and Kashmir.
