Former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court Justice A.P. Shah, said here on Tuesday that the Supreme Court judgment in the Justice Loya case was “utterly wrong and jurisprudentially incorrect”.
He was speaking at the release of former Union Minister Arun Shourie’s book Anita Gets Bail , a critique of the functioning of the judiciary in India.
Summarising Mr. Shourie’s critique of the Supreme Court’s judgment that no enquiry was needed into the death of Justice B. H. Loya, who was hearing a petition related to the Sohrabuddin encounter case in which current BJP president Amit Shah was an accused, Justice Shah said, “In my opinion, the judgment in the Justice Loya case is utterly wrong and jurisprudentially incorrect.”
He related how a three-judge Bench of the apex court concluded that all enquiries be closed “because this is the final word on this controversy”.
Before articulating this critique of the judgment rejecting an enquiry into Justice Loya’s death, which came after Mr. Shourie’s book went to press, Justice Shah narrated the author’s summary of the sequence of events, underlining that a case that should have ordinarily been heard by the Bombay High Court landed up as a petition in the Supreme Court and was assigned to Justice Arun Mishra’s Bench.
The plea in the Supreme Court came after a petition seeking an enquiry into the judge’s death was filed in the Bombay High Court following publication of a story in Caravan .
The story talked about how some of Justice Loya’s family members refused to accept that he died of a sudden heart attack.
“The Supreme Court acted as a court of appeal and granted some sort of an acquittal without the benefit of the judgment of the trial court,” Justice Shah said.
Speaking after Justice Shah, former Chief Justice Justice R.M. Lodha commended the book and underlined the importance of independence of the judiciary from the executive.
In his address at the end of the session, Mr. Shourie hit out at what he called was the executive’s “attempt to undermine the judiciary” and the latter’s role of “convenience to the executive”.
He exhorted senior lawyers in the audience to “counsel the Chief Justice of India [CJI Dipak Misra]”.
“Today, there is a well-planned, systematic assault.... The mentality is totalitarian, meaning total control over every geographical and institutional space,” Mr. Shourie said, adding that it was time to “check them on every manoeuvre”.
‘No oath-taking’
Criticising the rejection of Justice K.M. Joseph’s name, which was sent from the Supreme Court collegium for appointment as an apex court judge, Mr. Shourie said the CJI could have said that there would be no oath-taking ceremony unless both names sent by the collegium were accepted.
“Today we are getting accustomed to a new normal,” Mr. Shourie said, hitting out at the newly appointed Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister for saying that the gang rape of a child in Kathua was a “minor incident”.
