Forensic experts put question marks on Judge Loya’s death

New Delhi : Was Mumbai’s CBI Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya poisoned? At a time when The Supreme Court is hearing petitions for an independent probe into his mysterious death in Nagpur on December 1, 2024, a top most forensic expert has dismissed the official claim that he had died of heart attack.

The sensational revelation of the findings of Dr R K Sharma, president of the Indian Association of Medico-Legal Experts for 22 years and a former head of the Forensic Medicine and Toxicology Department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, is that the medical documents show “signs of possible trauma to the brain, and even possible poisoning.”

Dr Sharma has written five books on forensic and medico-legal issues, trained judges and public prosecutors on multiple occasions and he has been a consultant for the CB. On the basis of study of all documents concerning Loya, he insists that there should be an investigation as demanded by several petitions in the Apex Court.

His findings, contradicting both post mortem report and the viscera report prepared at the Government Medical College in Nagpur, have been published in the latest issue of the Delhi-based Caravan magazine, which had raised many doubts four months ago on Judge Loya’s death when he was hearing a case of Sohrabuddin’s fake encounter in Gujarat in 2005.

Sharma’s expert opinion after studying Loya’s post-mortem report and related histopathology report that accompanied samples of Loya’s viscera and results of its chemical analysis contradicts the Maharashtra Government’s submission in the Apex Court that there is no cause for suspicion regarding his death.

“There is no evidence of myocardial infarction in the histopathology report. The findings in this report have no suggestion of a heart attack. They show changes, but not a heart attack,” says Sharma in the report.

“More importantly, dura is congested according to the post-mortem report,” Sharma added. “Dura mater is the outermost layer that surrounds our brain. It is damaged in cases of trauma, which indicates some kind of an assault on the brain. A physical assault.”

Dr Anuradha Biyani, Loya’s sister and a medical doctor in the service of the Maharashtra government, told The Caravan earlier that, when she saw her brother’s body for the first time after his death, “there were bloodstains on the neck at the back of the shirt.” Biyani maintains a diary, and in an entry from the time of Loya’s death she recorded that “there was blood on his collar.”

“Our parents are 85 and 80 years old, and are healthy with no cardiac history,” his sister Anuradha Biyani has insisted, pointing out that he was always a teetotaller, played table tennis for two hours a day for years, had no diabetes or blood pressure.