India, July 21 -- Three decades after Abdul Hameed was arrested and nearly 12 years after he was sentenced to death, the Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside his conviction in the 1996 bus bomb blast case, holding that the trial was vitiated by the denial of effective legal representation and procedural fairness, and ordered a de novo trial to be concluded within a year.

Fourteen people were killed and 37 injured in the blast on a bus on the Jaipur-Agra Highway on May 22, 1996, a day after the Lajpat Nagar bomb blast in Delhi, in which 13 people were killed. The Supreme Court judgment leaves the case without any convicted accused for the present, with Hameed facing a fresh trial while all other accused stand acquitted.

A bench of justices...