A man jailed for eight years for inflicting biological grievous bodily harm after infecting two women with HIV has been granted a retrial.

The Court of Appeal in London quashed Kenyan-born Mohammed Dica's convictions last Wednesday.

Dica, 38, was sentenced to eight years in jail on October 14 last year after being found guilty under section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act.

The landmark conviction made the father-of-three the first person in 137 years to be convicted in England and Wales for sexually transmitting a disease.

The Lord Justice Lord Woolf, sitting with two senior judges, ruled last week that the judge in Dica's trial should not have withdrawn from the jury the issue of whether the women consented to sex with Dica, knowing he was HIV positive.

Judge Philpot had said at the trial that even if the women one of whom was a 38-year-old Croydon mother-of-two consented it provided Dica with no legal defence.

Dica, who lived in Mitcham and St Paul's Road, Thornton Heath, was refused bail pending a retrial, which is expected in the next six weeks.