British colonial courts admitted illegally seized papers as evidence years later

Evidence

While the government gave no reason for their initial arrest, eventually it argued that they had raised and transmitted money to jihadis fighting on the frontier between 1847 and 1869. Amir Khan had been initially arrested and temporarily detained in 1864 in connection with the Ambala trial, and the police seized his account books and the letters he purportedly exchanged with one of the men on trial. At that time, the judge ruled Amir Khan’s arrest illegal and ordered that his papers be returned. For some unknown reason, however, the papers were never returned, and the government used them as key evidence against the brothers in 1871. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 72

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why were the papers never returned, and was the judge’s ruling simply ignored? Worth chasing in the trial record.
• XREF: Connects to histories of colonial legal exceptionalism and evidence laundering in sedition prosecutions.