Supreme Court Dismisses All Petitions Pertaining to Judge Loya’s Death

In yet another surprising move the Supreme Court today dismissed all the petitions seeking an independent probe into the death of Judge Loya. The Court termed the petitions as ‘politically motivated’, and ‘aimed at scandalising the judiciary’.

The bench, headed by CJI Dipak Misra as well as Justice Chandrachud and Justice Khanwilkar, stated that there is no reason to doubt the results of the discreet enquiry conducted by the Maharashtra government. While the actual order dismissing the petitions has not yet been uploaded on the Supreme Court’s website, one can only wonder what led to the Court’s decision.

The petitions in the Supreme Court were filed by several petitioners; Tehseen Poonawala, Bandhuraj Sambhaji Lone, the Bombay Lawyers’ Association, Admiral L. Ramdas, the All India Lawyers’ Union, and the Centre for Public Interest Litigation.

In the hearings, the petitioners had raised questions regarding the sequence of events leading to Judge Loya’s death, the ECG report, post-mortem report, as well as the condition the body was in when it had been delivered to his family. Further questions were raised regarding his medical history, neither of his parents had suffered from heart disease yet he died from a heart attack.

The Supreme Court in its dismissal had told the advocates appearing on behalf of the petitioners that their statements in Court amounted to criminal contempt, yet the Court would not pursue the matter. This magnanimity of the Court may reflect that the Court is unwilling to entertain a defence of ‘truth’, as such a defence would result in evidence being led, which once again would bring up the Judge Loya matter. However, this is a mere speculation.

On the other hand, by virtue of dismissing the petitions for lack of merit, the Court has not quite put to rest the speculation on Judge Loya’s death. Even Judge Loya’s son’s public appeal could not limit the speculation. Therefore, the matter is unlikely to go away despite the dismissal. For one, Judge Loya’s family received the news of his death at a time earlier than the one mentioned in the post-mortem report. The ECG report that a certain news organisation carried had been debunked by cardiologists. The doctor in charge of the post-mortem report himself was politically linked. There's also the fact that Judge Loya was hearing a matter involving a BJP party member and had died in Nagpur.

While the current fallout over the dismissal has been entirely political, the least the Supreme Court could have done was desist from terming the petitions as such. This is because the petitions did raise a legitimate concern, regardless of how it was perceived by the Court.