In Brief
The appellant was convicted of conspiracy and explosives offences related to an aborted bombing attempt in 1990. The Supreme Court allowed his criminal appeal and acquitted him. The court rejected the appellant's confession as inadmissible because it was recorded without compliance to statutory safeguards for voluntary confessions—there was insufficient contemporary record of warnings, and circumstances including prior torture allegations contradicted voluntariness. The court also held that confessions of two co-accused, tried separately, were inadmissible: Section 15 of the TADA Act (as amended 1993) requires joint trial for co-accused confessions to be admissible. Since the appellant was tried alone, the co-accused confessions could not be used against him, leaving the conviction without sufficient evidence."
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