The Maharashtra government opened its arguments on the death of CBI judge B.H. Loya by accusing the PILs and interventions filed in the Supreme Court for an independent probe as an attempt to “scandalize the judiciary” by “taking advantage of the unfortunate death of a judge”.
Appearing before a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Monday, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, for Maharashtra, said the PILs and interventions were based on “hearsay” and an “unconfirmed article” published in a magazine nearly three years after the death of Judge Loya in 2014, while he was attending a wedding in Nagpur in the company of his judicial colleagues.
He said the PIL petitioners had rose from their slumber to move the Supreme Court. They treat the magazine article as “gospel” without “even lifting a little finger to verify the allegations” of foul play.
Mr. Rohatgi claimed the PILs were merely “cut-and-paste” jobs of the magazine article. He read portions from the PILs filed by activist Tehseen Poonawala and Maharashtra-based journalist B.S. Lone in a bid to buttress his claim.
“Newspaper articles do not per se form legally permissible evidence,” Mr. Rohatgi said. He questioned the credentials of the petitioners to file the PILs “completely bereft of any kind of sense”.
He said the Bombay Lawyers Association, whose petition was transferred to the apex court from the Bombay High Court, shows “no sympathy for the judiciary, no concern for the death and is aimed at scandalising the judiciary”.
Mr. Rohatgi said the “oblique political motive” behind the “flurry” of PILs was to “bring in insinuations on somebody in the ruling party”. Judge Loya, at the time of his death, was hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case in which, later, BJP national president Amit Shah was discharged of all charges.
Referring to arguments made by the opposite side in the apex court, the senior advocate submitted that “everybody argued as if this was a murder trial”.
He said the scope of enquiry presently is limited to whether “Loya died of medical ailment or did he die an unnatural death”. The judges who accompanied Judge Loya had given statements that he died of natural causes. These signed statements were collected during a discreet enquiry by the State Intelligence department last year following the magazine article.
“The judges were with him like his shadow till his death and till his body was taken back to be cremated. There is no reason to disbelieve or discredit these judges. They have no axe to grind. Their statements are topped up with the fact that Bombay High Court judges came within half an hour of being informed and the then Chief Justice [of the Bombay High Court] also came… If their statements are to be totally rejected, it has to be prima facie accepted that they [judges] were conspirators in his death,” Mr. Rohatgi submitted.
He dismissed the alleged discrepancies in their statements as details missed in the “hustle and bustle”. He said the judges who were with Mr. Loya were after all “laymen as far as medical matters are concerned”.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave had earlier requested the apex court for an opportunity to examine the judges about their statements.
