BH Loya
As if the case around judge BH Loya’s death wasn’t exciting and troubling enough, the Caravan’s Nikita Saxena has spoken to more than a dozen staff at the hospital where his post-mortem was carried out, and the picture that’s getting painted continues to cast serious doubt about whether Loya died of natural causes, suggesting that a head injury was deliberately covered up by a doctor with medical connections.
Senior advocate Arvind Nigam won temporary relief for Dushyant Dave who was to face disciplinary proceedings before the Gujarat bar council (SBC) for his alleged remarks before the Supreme Court in the judge BH Loya death case, reported PTI and others.
The Bombay Lawyers Association, represented by Dushyant Dave before the Supreme Court in the hearing into the death of Judge BH Loya, has filed the following written statement today.
Senior advocate Indira Jaising has requested the Supreme Court to amend its order to reflect that she did not agree to the transfer of Bombay high court petitions to the apex court, since she was not appearing on behalf of the Bombay high court petitioners but “reminded the court” that she would be intervening on behalf of Admiral Ramdas.
Judge BH Loya’s mysterious death was finally heard today for nearly an hour by the Supreme Court, under the shadow of the 12 January press conference of the Famous Four Judges, as well as Justice Arun Mishra’s equally mysterious recusal from hearing the case, after passing an order on 16 January.
The petitioners' alleged affiliations don't bode well for the apex court inquiry into BH Loya's death, which would affect other lower court petitions into the matter.
The Caravan reported:
The Backgrounds of the Loya Petitioners in the Supreme Court Raise Questions About the Legitimacy of Their Petitions
The Supreme Court is presently hearing two petitions seeking a probe into the mysterious death of the judge BH Loya. At the time of his death, Loya was presiding over the trial in the Sohrabuddin encounter case, in which Amit Shah, now the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, was the prime accused. The two petitions were filed, respectively, by Tehseen Poonawalla, who claims to be a “political trendsetter” on his Twitter profile, and Bandhuraj Sambhaji Lone, who has been referred to in the media as a journalist from Maharashtra. The backgrounds of the petitioners, and the manner in which the petitions have been listed and heard since they were clubbed together on 12 January, merit close scrutiny.
While the media has identified Poonawalla as a Congress leader and Lone as a journalist, these labels appear to be of questionable validity. The leaders of the Congress have been forthrightly clear that the party has nothing to do with Poonawala’s petition. “The Congress party has not filed this petition,” Kapil Sibal, the party leader and Supreme Court lawyer, told me. “I was not consulted and I have nothing to do with it.” Lone did have a career as a journalist, but several of his former editors and colleagues told me that he was no longer working as one, and that he was informally attached to the public-relations office of Ashish Shelar, the head of BJP’s Mumbai unit. “He is one of those journalists who switch over to the personal staff of politicians,” one of Lone’s former editors, who requested not to be identified, told me. Lone, when contacted, denied this.
I spoke to three of Lone’s former editors and two of his colleagues, most of whom did not want to be identified. They helped piece together some of the history of the man. Lone worked for around a decade as a reporter for Mahanagar, a Marathi daily, before moving to another daily, Loksatta, where he was given the prestigious assignment of covering the Bombay Municipal Corporation. A former editor and a former colleague of his said that Lone liked to wax eloquent about the ideas of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Jotirao Phule and BR Ambedkar. “He fancied himself a revolutionary,” his former colleague said. “But it was mostly just talk.”
The reasassignment to a CJI-headed bench follows the recusal of the junior bench that had been assigned by Misra to look into the allegations of foulplay in Justice BH Loya's death, which had led to the four-most senior apex court judges, other than the CJI, to hold a press conference about Misra's alleged trend trying to manipulate cases through is power of bench assignments.
The Hindu reported:
Chief Justice decides to hear PILs on CBI judge Loya’s death
A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra will hear on January 22 two PILs for an independent probe into the death of CBI judge B.H. Loya.
Justice Loya, at the time of his death in December 2014, was hearing the politically-sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh police encounter case.
On January 16, a Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Mohan M. Shantanagoudar recused themselves from hearing the PILs any further by inserting a line in their order saying “put up case before appropriate Bench.”