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Seeni Nainar Mohammed v. State Rep. by Deputy Superintendent of Police

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal No. 498 of 2012)Decided 27 Apr 2017
Criminal Appeal No. 498 of 2012
Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose · Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman

Background

Six men, including the appellant Seeni Nainar Mohammed (A-6), were tried by the Designated Court for TADA Cases, Tirunelveli, for conspiring to murder Rajagopalan, president of a social organisation, who was stabbed and attacked outside his home in 1994. The trial court convicted all six and sentenced them to life imprisonment under TADA and IPC provisions; Mohammed, who was alleged to have instigated the killing, filed this separate appeal (the others filed a connected appeal). The appellants challenged, among other things, whether the mandatory prior sanction for prosecution under TADA had been properly obtained.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the sanction for prosecution granted by the Superintendent of Police and the Inspector-General, CBI did not comply with the mandatory requirements of Section 20-A of TADA, and relying on its own precedent in Ashrafkhan v. State of Gujarat, held this was not a curable technical defect but one that goes to the root of the Designated Court's jurisdiction, meaning the entire TADA prosecution was vitiated from the start. The Court also found the identification parade unreliable because the accused's photographs had already appeared in newspapers before the parade was held, and held that the confessions of A-1 and A-6 (Mohammed) were not voluntary since they were recorded while in the immediate custody of a high-security investigating agency. Because the conviction rested on these legally infirm foundations, the Court quashed the conviction and sentence entirely and ordered the appellants released forthwith (unless wanted in any other case).

Lesson Learnt

Special anti-terror laws like TADA come with strict procedural safeguards, such as a valid prior sanction before prosecution begins, and failure to follow them is not a mere technicality; it can void an entire conviction, however serious the underlying crime, because such laws restrict personal liberty and must be applied exactly as the statute requires.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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