The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a review petition seeking an investigation into Central Bureau of Investigation Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya’s death, reported ANI. Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said there was no reason to reconsider its April 19 verdict in the case, which said that the Loya died of natural causes.
The Supreme Court was hearing a plea filed by the Bombay Lawyers Association seeking a review of the top court’s April 19 judgement dismissing pleas for an independent inquiry into Loya’s death.
The top court said in its verdict on April 19 that there was no reason to not believe the judicial officers who were present with Loya at the time of his death. It accused the petitioners of trying to “malign the judiciary” and called their petitions “scandalous and amounting to criminal contempt”.
During an earlier hearing, senior advocate Dushyant Dave, who filed the petition on behalf of the Bombay Lawyers Association, urged the court to delete its findings that called the petitions a “veiled attempt to launch a frontal attack on the independence of the judiciary and to dilute the credibility of judicial institutions”.
Dave said the verdict had resulted in a “miscarriage of justice if not a complete negation of justice on the facts of the case”.
At the time of his death on December 1, 2014, Loya was handling the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, in which Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah was an accused. Shah was later discharged in the case. Suspicions were raised whether Loya’s death was natural after The Caravan published a report in November 2017, in which members of the judge’s family raised a number of questions around the circumstances of his death and said that he had been under pressure at the time.
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