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SC orders Maharashtra govt to hand over documents related to Judge Loya’s death to petitioners

The documents were passed on to the court in a sealed cover

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ensured transparency into the circumstances behind the death of CBI judge B.H. Loya by directing the Maharashtra government to share all documents linked to the death with the PIL petitioners.

Judge Loya was hearing the politically sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh police encounter case when he passed away.

“It is a matter which they [petitioners] should know everything,” Justice Arun Mishra, heading the Bench with Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar, orally observed in a crowded courtroom.

The order came even as four judges of the Supreme Court went public on January 13 against the selective assignment of the Loya petition by Chief Justice Misra to the Bench led by Justice Arun Mishra.

The press conference was held hardly an hour after Justice Mishra, who heard the Loya PILs, observed in court that the petitions dealt with a “serious matter.”

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave had intervened in the hearing on January 13 and asked Justice Mishra’s Bench not to take up the case. Mr. Dave said that his client, Bombay Lawyers Association, had already filed an identical petition in the Bombay HC, which is already seized of the issue. Mr. Dave had asked the apex court not to entertain the petitions filed here.

But Justice Mishra’s Bench had gone ahead to ask the Maharashtra government to produce the records on January 16. “We have given the court all the appropriate documents,” senior advocate Harish Salve, who appeared for Maharashtra, told the media.

The documents were passed on to the court in a sealed cover. The court, in turn, asked the petitioners, to not make the contents of the public or disclose it in anyway.

The SC is hearing petitions filed by Maharashtra-based journalist B.R. Lonefor a probe into Loya’s death on December 1, 2014. Another petition has also been filed by Congress leader Tehseen Poonawala on the same issue.

Mr. Loya is reported to have died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur on December 1, 2014, when he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleague’s daughter.

The issue came under the spotlight in November last year after media reports quoting his sister fuelled suspicion about the circumstances surrounding his death and its link to the Sohrabuddin case.

Mr. Poonawala, in his plea, said the circumstances revolving around the death of the judge were “questionable, mysterious and contradicting”.

The other plea filed by the journalist submitted that a fair probe was needed into the mysterious death of Loya, who was hearing the sensitive Sohrabuddin encounter case in which various police officers and BJP president Amit Shah were named as parties.

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