Nearly 30 years after being imprisoned for a bombing that killed 18 people, Mohammad Ilyas has been acquitted by the Allahabad High Court in the 1996 Modinagar–Ghaziabad bus blast case. The court concluded that the State had not substantiated even the foundational allegations against him.
Ilyas had been picked up from his home in Ludhiana in June 1997.
In a judgment issued on November 10, a division bench of Justices Siddharth and Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra overturned his conviction, remarking that the prosecution had, in the court’s words, “miserably failed” to prove his involvement in the incident.
The judges noted that they were issuing the acquittal “with a heavy heart,” acknowledging that the explosion had been a “terrorist” attack that deeply disturbed the public and resulted in 18 deaths. However, they stressed that, despite the gravity of the crime, no admissible evidence linked Ilyas to it.
The bench also held that the trial court had made a serious legal mistake by treating as evidence a police-recorded audio cassette said to contain Ilyas’s confession — a statement that is unequivocally barred under Section 25 of the Evidence Act, Maktoob Media reported.
The court observed that once the disputed evidence is removed from consideration, there remains nothing on record to support the charges against the appellant.
It also pointed out that the prosecution’s own witnesses, including those linked to an alleged extrajudicial confession by Ilyas and the co-accused, retracted their earlier statements during the trial and did not back the State’s version.
The order added that the confession attributed to the accused and recorded by a senior police officer, due to an embargo created by Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, bars such statements from being proved.
The case stems from an incident on April 27, 1996, when a bus carrying 53 passengers departed Delhi at 3.55 pm, with 14 more passengers boarding along the route. Soon after passing Modinagar Police Station, a blast tore through the front of the vehicle. Ten passengers were killed on the spot and 48 sustained injuries. Forensic experts later concluded that RDX combined with carbon had been planted under the driver’s seat and detonated via remote control.
Prosecutors alleged that the bombing was planned by Abdul Mateen alias Iqbal, a Pakistani national described as a district commander of Harkat-ul-Ansar, in collaboration with Mohammad Ilyas and Tasleem. Ilyas was said to have been indoctrinated in Jammu and Kashmir.
In 2013, the trial court acquitted Tasleem while finding Ilyas and Abdul Mateen guilty under several IPC provisions and the Explosive Substances Act. Both received life sentences along with additional rigorous imprisonment and fines. The State did not appeal Tasleem’s acquittal, and there is no clarity on whether Abdul Mateen pursued an appeal.