Judge Loya's Story Behind Supreme Court Crisis

By : Jishan Ghaziabadi

As the Supreme Court crisis arose, the death mystery of Judge BH Loya is also become the prominent discussion who had died three years back in the morning of 1 December 2014. Judge BH Loya was presiding CBI special court in Mumbai and hearing a high profile case of the fake encounter killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The primary accused in this case was Amit Shah, then Gujarat minister of state for home and BJP's national president when Judge Loya had died.

The sister of judge BH Loya said that some weeks before his death, the judge had confided in her about the bribe offer of 100 crore, which she alleged had been made by the then Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Mohit Shah. This, she said, had also been confirmed to her by Loya’s father Harkishan Shah, she says, also allegedly offered Loya a house in Mumbai. Caravan magazine says it reached out to Mohit Shah for his reaction to this accusation, but did not receive a response. She also said that Mohit Shah tried to pressure him to "issue the judgement as soon as possible and to ensure that it is a positive judgement".

Prior to Judge Loya, Judge JT Utpat was hearing that case. In 2012, the Supreme Court had ordered that the trial in the case be shifted from Gujarat to Maharashtra, stating that it was “convinced that in order to preserve the integrity of the trial it is necessary to shift it outside the State.” The Supreme Court had also ordered that the trial be heard by the same judge from start to finish. But, in violation of this order, JT Utpat, the judge who first heard the trial, was transferred from the CBI special court in mid 2014, and replaced by Loya.

Piqued by Amit Shah's repeated failure to appear in court, Judge JT Utpat had ordered the BJP leader to present himself on June 26 but one day before that on June 25, 2014, he was transferred to the Pune Sessions Court. 

On 31 October  2014, Loya, who had allowed Shah the exemption, asked why Shah had failed to appear in court despite being in Mumbai on that date. He set the next date of hearing for 15 December.

According to Mihir Desai, lawyer of Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin, Judge Loya was keen on to examining the entire chargesheet - over 10,000 pages long. 

The most interesting thing is that Judge MB Gosavi, who took charge after death of Judge Loya begin hearing Amit Shah's application for release on December 15, 2014 and concluded hearings two days later on December 17, reserving his order.

After two days of hearing, within a month of Judge Loya's death, Judge MB Gosavi ruled that Amit Shah had no case to answer and discharged him before the trial had even started. Since then, 11 more persons- mostly senior police officials from Gujarat have been discharged from the case. Amazingly, the CBI didn't file any appeal in a higher court in respect of this case.

There are a lot of questions relating to the sudden death of Judge Loya which remain unanswered. His family now disputes that claim, pointing to various discrepancies in the manner the post-mortem report was prepared, the condition or his clothes and body, the time of his death and the wiping clean office mobile phone data.

Now, Justice Arun Mishra is going to hear a petition tomorrow that calls for an independent investigation into the death of special judge BH Loya. 

Courtesy : THE CARAVAN