The Maharashtra government asked the Supreme Court on Friday to be “very, very careful” in deciding whether to order an investigation into the death of Judge B.H. Loya on the basis of certain PILs, cautioning that it may even burgeon into a threat against judicial independence itself.
Appearing before a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, on behalf of the Maharashtra government, said if an investigation was ordered by the apex court, the police would have to take Section 161 CrPC (examination of witnesses by police) statements from sitting high court and district judges.
The State urged the CJI, as paterfamilias of the judiciary, to protect its independence. The court reserved the petitions for passing final orders.
Mr. Rohatgi’s submissions centered on the point that the four judges who accompanied Judge Loya to Nagpur where he died in 2014 had concurred that he died of a heart attack. Mr. Rohatgi said the apex court should believe its own brethren rather than the PIL petitioners and a magazine which published a series of stories three years later, in 2017, raising doubts about the death. The senior advocate said the judges had “no axe to grind.”
He submitted that advocate Prashant Bhushan had relied on Caravan magazine’s report quoting Dr. R.K. Sharma, a former forensics department head at AIIMS, that heart attack was not the cause of Judge Loya’s death. But Dr. Sharma, subsequently, had said he was “grossly misquoted” by the magazine. Meanwhile, another medical expert had said “acute coronary insufficiency” was the cause of Loya’s death.
However, Mr. Bhushan countered that Dr. Sharma could have been pressured to change his version.
