Supreme Court agrees to hear Judge Loya case on Feb 2

A discreet inquiry was held into the circumstances of Judge BH Loya’s death after a report questioning the circumstances appeared in Caravan magazine, senior lawyer Harish Salve informed the Supreme Court on Monday. Salve, appearing for the Maharashtra Government, also claimed that four judges who had accompanied Loya to Nagpur had given a declaration that he died of a cardiac arrest after complaining of chest pain and that there was no malafide involved.

Judge Loya was presiding over a CBI special court in Mumbai that was to decide on the discharge petition filed by BJP national president Amit Shah. His family had complained of pressure brought upon him by the then chief justice of the Bombay High Court Mohit Shah; and alleged that the judge was offered a bribe of Rs 100 Crore and a flat in Mumbai in return for a favourable order.

While Loya died allegedly of cardiac arrest on December 1, 2014, his successor gave a favourable order and discharged the BJP president on December 30, 2014, after hearing the CBI for 15 minutes and without apparently going through the chargesheet that extended to 10,000 pages.

Senior lawyer Dushyant Dave told the court that Salve had appeared for Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case and hence should not appear now for the state of Maharashtra. Salve snapped that he did not need any sermon on propriety from Dave.

Justice Chandrachud asserted that neither the bar association nor a judge could tell a lawyer to appear or not to appear. It should be left to the conscience of the lawyers, he added.

The Bench asserted that it would consider the demand for an independent probe into the death dispassionately. While reports in the media about the circumstances of his death were serious, the judges said, they would like to review all the facts and documents related to the death before reaching a conclusion.

The court also ordered two similar petitions pending before the Bombay High Court to be transferred and clubbed with the petitions filed before the Supreme Court by Tehseen Poonawala, a Congress supporter, and Bandhuraj Lone, an aide of a BJP leader.

This is the third Petition that the Supreme Court has transferred to itself after the sanitary pads GST issue and Maharashtra Noise Pollution PIL. “Might as well start filing matters in the SC directly now,” quipped a Supreme Court lawyer.