Judge Loya case: Supreme Court adjourns hearing, stresses on transparency; tells Maharashtra govt to give medical docs to petitioners

The highly-anticipated hearing at the Supreme Court around the circumstances surrounding the death of CBI special Judge BH Loya ended in five minutes, with the apex court saying that the petitioners “must know everything”. The court did not fix any specific date but listed the matter for hearing after a week.

The Maharashtra government placed the documents related to death of Judge Loya in a sealed cover before the court. It told the court that barring certain confidential reports placed by it, the petitioners can access other documents.

The petitions were filed last Thursday and allocated to Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Mohan M Shantanagoudar the next day according to The Indian Express. The hearing was deferred to Tuesday as Justice Shantanagoudar was not available

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The hearings were being conducted on two petitions, one filed by BR Lone, a Maharashtra-based journalist and the other by activist Tehseen Poonawala.

The counsel for the petitioners told the bench that they needed to look into these documents to argue the matter. “It is a matter where they (petitioners) should know everything,” the bench observed. Salve later told the court that the documents could be shown to the petitioners’ counsel but they should not make it public and they would mark the confidential documents.

The petitioners’ counsel also assured the court that they would not make any of the documents public.

Case was one of the reasons for judges’ rebellion

It is worth noting that Judge Loya death case was one of the reasons which prompted four senior to take their grievance about case allotment to the public on 12 January. A crisis had erupted after four senior judges — Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph — openly castigated the functioning of the top court headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.

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On Tuesday, the Bar Council of India said there was “absolutely no crisis now” in the Supreme Court and normalcy will be restored soon in the higher judiciary. BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra told PTI that a seven-member delegation on Monday met Justice Ranjan Gogoi, one of the four judges who held the 12 January presser, and he assured him that there was no crisis at all. “Justice Gogoi said the crisis is over. He said there is no dispute at all,” Manan said when asked about reports which projected a contrary situation.

This was in contradiction to the statement made by Attorney-General KK Venugopal who said the crisis seems to be unresolved and hoped it will be “fully settled” in a couple of days. On Tuesday, Venugopal told PTI, “Yes, I think it has not been settled. Lets hope things will be fully settled within 2-3 days.”