Bombay HC's division bench finally hears petition alleging judge BH Loya was poisoned using radioactive isotopes

After two division benches of the Bombay High Court recused from hearing a petition on Judge BH Loya’s death, a third bench finally heard a petition filed by advocate Satish Uke on Tuesday. Loya was the presiding judge in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case at a special court, but he died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur on 1 December, 2014, when he was attending the wedding of a colleague’s daughter. Uke’s petition, one of the many such pleas earlier filed in various courts, alleged that Loya was poisoned with a radioactive isotope. Senior counsel Sunil Manohar appeared for the government along with government pleader Sumant Deopujari and pleaded before the court that the case should be dismissed because a Supreme Court bench had already dismissed the matter and ruled that Loya died of natural causes. However, Uke pleaded that he was an aggrieved in the case and he was not a respondent in the Supreme Court petition. A special bench comprising Justice Pradeep Deshmukh and Justice Rohit Deo admitted the plea and allowed the petitioner to make amendments in the prayer clause. It posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks,  The Times of India reported. [caption id=“attachment_4438753” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] File image of judge BH Loya. Courtesy: Facebook[/caption] Earlier, two two division bench of the Bombay High Court had withdrew from the case. Ukey’s petition first came up before a bench of Justices SB Shukre and SM Modak in Nagpur on 26 November 2018, but the judges said ’not before them’, meaning they will not hear it. The petition was then assigned to a bench of Justices PN Deshmukh and Swapna Joshi. However, Justice Joshi recused herself from the case on 29 November 2018. According to  Live Law, the reason for the judges’ recusal was not recorded, however, all three were present in Nagpur at the time of Loya’s death at the to attend the wedding of Justice Swapna Joshi’s daughter. Before this, in January last year , Justice Arun Mishra had recused himself from the case after four senior Supreme Court judges — J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph — convened an unprecedented press conference to complain about “selective” case allocation by the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra and passing of certain judicial order. Ukey’s petition seeks that all records related to Loya’s “suspicious” death be safeguarded, including those of the state guest house. He has already moved a judicial magistrate’s court in Nagpur seeking a probe into Loya’s death. The then chief justice had assigned the Loya death PIL to Justice Mishra, a relatively junior judge. The case of Justice Loya’s death came into the limelight in November 2017 when media reports quoted his sister fuelling suspicion about the circumstances surrounding Loya’s death and its link to the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case. In January 2018, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two pleas seeking an independent probe into Loya’s death. In the same month, the apex court said the issues raised in the please on the death of Loya were “serious” and then transferred to itself two petitions related to Loya’s death from Bombay High Court. On 2 February this year, the apex court said it was concerned only with the death of Loya and would not go into other aspects including Amit Shah’s discharge in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case. On 9 March, the Maharashtra government came down heavily on alleged accusations, bullying and browbeating of judges in the Supreme Court by some activist lawyers in the Loya death case and said the judiciary and judicial officers need to be saved from such averments. Just three days later, on 12 March, a Mumbai-based lawyers’ body brought on record in the apex court an order of the Bombay High Court to allege that one of the two judges, who had given statement in the Loya death case, had ordered settlement of a criminal case against a top BJP leader in 2014. On 19 April, the Supreme Court had dismissed pleas seeking an independent probe into the case, saying attempts were made to scandalise and malign the judiciary by levelling serious allegations against judicial officers and judges of the Bombay High Court. With inputs from agencies