NEW DELHI:The issue of CBI Special Judge B H Loya’s mysterious death again led to a heated exchange between senior counsel Dushyant Dave and Harish Salve in the Supreme Court on Monday.Dave, who is representing one of the petitioners demanding an independent probe into Loya’s death, expressed surprise over the readiness of certain judges of the Bombay High Court to give statements that it was a natural death.
“Why all the judges are in one breath saying Loya died of cardiac arrest? They should instead ask for an investigation. Why is there resistance all around?” Dave said.“Your Lordships judges are being abused. It can’t be allowed,” said Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta who, supported by senior counsel Harish Salve, is representing the state of Maharashtra before a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.
Dave retorted, “He (Mehta) has been a lawyer for Amit Shah for 15 years and now he is instructing Salve.”
Justice D Y Chandrachud also told Dave that the court has no intention to wish anything away as far as the case at hand is concerned but at the same time it did not want to pass any bad faith judgments on Bombay High Court judges and district courts’ judges for their media interviews and statements.
Loya had died of a cardiac arrest on December 1, 2014, in Nagpur where he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleagues daughter. He was handling the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case of November 2005, in which various police officers and BJP president Amit Shah were named.
Shah was later exonerated in the case.