Justice B H Loya
Justice B H Loya
The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Maharashtra government to provide all documents - pertaining to the death of special CBI judge B H Loya- to two people who sought an independent probe into his demise in 2014.- to two people who sought an independent probe into his demise in 2014.
The Maharashtra government, represented by senior advocate Harish Salve, furnished the documents, also containing the postmortem report, in a sealed envelope.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Mohan M Shantanagoudar ordered the state counsel to provide a copy of the documents to the counsel of petitioner Tehseen Poonawalla and Maharashtra-based journalist Bandhuraj Sambhaji Lone.
Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Pallav Sisodia and advocate Varinder Kumar Sharma submitted that they wanted to go through the documents.
Salve, for his part, said some of the documents were confidential, which can be provided to the petitioners with the condition that they would not be made public.
"It is a matter where they (petitioners) should know everything," the bench observed.
The court deferred the matter for hearing for after a week without specifying any date.
The allocation of the PILs to the Justice Mishra-led bench was cited as one of the reasons by the four seniormost judges of their public outbursts on January 12 against arbitrary assigning of cases by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra to hand-picked benches.
Loya (48) had died due to cardiac arrest when he went to attend the marriage ceremony of colleague's daughter on December 1, 2014, but his family members raised suspicion over the death in a series of news reports by a magazine.
The judge was hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. BJP president Amit Shah and senior police officers, who were accused in the encounter case, were subsequently discharged.