The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected pleas for an independent probe into the death of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Judge B H Loya, who was hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, involving various police officers and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah. The petitions seeking an independent probe were heard by a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra.
"There is no merit in the petitions and there is no reason to doubt the statements of sitting judges, attempt of the petitioners was to malign the judiciary," the apex court said, while dismissing petitions seeking fresh probe into Justice Loya's death, news agency ANI reported.
There is no merit in the petitions & there is no reason to doubt the statements of sitting Judges, attempt of the petitioners was to malign the judiciary, said SC while dismissing petitions seeking SIT porbe into #JudgeLoya's death — ANI (@ANI) April 19, 2018
The apex court had earlier asked the Maharashtra government to submit the post-mortem report of the CBI judge, who had died in suspicious circumstances in 2014, citing that the "matter was very serious". According to official records, Justice Loya died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur a day after he attended the wedding and reception of his colleague's daughter.
According to reports, Maharashtra-based journalist B S Lone and activist Tehseen Poonavala had filed independent pleas seeking a fair probe into the death of Justice Loya.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice Misra and judges A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud had on March 16 reserved their judgment on the pleas.
The Maharashtra government had argued in the apex court that all pleas seeking an independent probe into Loya's death were motivated and aimed at targeting "one individual" in the guise of upholding the rule of law. It had come down heavily on alleged accusations, bullying and browbeating of judges in the top court by some activist lawyers in the Loya case and said that the judiciary and judicial officers need to be saved from such averments.
Meanwhile, those seeking an independent probe into the matter had referred to the sequence of events to highlight that a fair investigation was needed to rule out any foul play in the death.
With agency inputs