Judge Loya death: Supreme Court mulling independent investigation

New Delhi: The Supreme Court is likely to settle the question of whether or not an independent investigation should be initiated into the death of former judge B.H.Loya on Thursday.

He was presiding over the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case when he died.

A three-judge bench comprising the Chief Justice, Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud will rule on the issue in light of the allegedly mysterious circumstances surrounding Loya’s death.

The Supreme Court is seized of a batch of petitions, including one by Congress leader Tehseen Poonawalla and another by a Maharashtra-based journalist, seeking a probe into Loya’s death. These also include the two pleas that the apex court transferred to itself including the one brought by the Bombay Lawyers’ Association (BLA).

The Loya death case had earlier been allocated to a bench comprising justices Arun Mishra and M.M. Shantanagoudar. However, after the recent judicial crisis over claims made by four senior apex court judges about an arbitrary system of allotment of cases by the chief justice, Misra constituted a new bench comprising justices Chandrachud, A.M. Khanwilkar and himself on 20 January to hear the matter.

Harish Salve, appearing for the Maharashtra government, had told the court that a discreet inquiry had been conducted into the circumstances of Loya’s death after media reports to the contrary had surfaced.

According to the documents submitted to the court, four judicial officers who accompanied Loya to the hospital after he complained of chest pain have denied any foul play in their statements.

This was opposed by Dushyant Dave, appearing for the BLA, who said that the documents being referred to by the Maharashtra government were “self-serving in nature”. He referred to a Right to Information (RTI) report from the police indicating that Loya’s death was suspicious.

The court also discussed the November 2017 article by Caravan magazine, that raised doubts about whether Loya died from natural causes.

Loya died of a cardiac arrest on 1 December 2014 in Nagpur, where he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleague’s daughter. His death came under the scanner following media reports citing some members of the judge’s family expressing doubts over the circumstances of his death.