NIKITA SAXENA - Death Of Judge Loya: Testimonies Of Ravi Bhawan Employees Raise Questions About Statements Of Four Judges // Post-Mortem Examination Manipulated Under Directions Of Doctor Related To Maharashtra Cabinet Minister
Further investigation
by The Caravan into the events that transpired on the final
night of the judge BH Loya’s life has raised troubling concerns regarding
statements submitted by four judges who claim to have been with him in the
hours before he died, on the night intervening 30 November and 1 December
2014. The Caravan spoke to 17 current and former employees of
Ravi Bhawan, the government-run VIP guest house where Loya is said to have
stayed in Nagpur.
None of these employees - all of whom save one were working at
Ravi Bhawan in November 2014 - had any inkling at that time that a guest staying
at the guest house had, as the judges stated, become grievously unwell, been
taken to a hospital early in the morning, and subsequently died. Most of these
employees learnt of Loya’s death three years later, in November 2017,
when The Caravan’s story regarding the suspicious circumstances
surrounding Loya’s death broke, leading to news coverage of his demise and consequently an inquiry by Maharashtra’s State Intelligence Department
Soon after The
Caravan broke the story of Loya’s mysterious death, the four
judges - Shrikant Kulkarni and SM Modak, who said they travelled to Nagpur from
Mumbai with Loya, and VC Barde and Roopesh Rathi, who were serving in Nagpur at
the time - submitted signed statements to Sanjay Barve, the commissioner of
Maharashtra’s SID. These statements formed the primary lines of defence for the
state of Maharashtra in the Supreme Court, where it argued that Loya’s death
was natural.
Mukul Rohatgi, the former attorney general of India, who is
representing the state of Maharashtra in the matter, declared that he was “saddened and shocked” that
the counsel for petitioners seeking an independent inquiry into Loya’s death
had raised doubts about these testimonies. Dushyant Dave, a lawyer for one of
the petitioners, insisted before the court that the four judges were mere
witnesses in this matter, and should file their submissions as affidavits and
be cross-examined, under Supreme Court Rules. According to the
statements the judges submitted to the SID, Loya first started complaining of
chest pain to Modak and Kulkarni, both of whom said they were with him at Ravi
Bhawan, at around 4 am. Barde stated that Kulkarni called him, informed him of
Loya’s condition, and asked him to come to Ravi Bhawan along with Rathi.
According to Rathi, Barde arrived in his car to pick Rathi up from his
quarters. Both judges then went to Ravi Bhawan in Barde’s car. When they
arrived, “Judge Loya was attending natures call,” Rathi wrote in his statement.
“There after he came down and told that he is having heartburn & having
ache in his heart and requested for help.” Subsequently, the judges stated,
they accompanied Loya to Dande Hospital, and then further to Meditrina
hospital, where he is said to have been declared dead.
I tracked down 17
current and former employees of Ravi Bhawan who managed the day-to-day affairs
of the guest house - everything from administration, reception and room service,
to engineering work and miscellaneous other duties - to their current locations
in different parts of Maharashtra. I met 15 of the 17 individually the first
time I interviewed them. I went back several times to many of them with
additional queries. To protect the identities of these individuals, The
Caravan has chosen to identify them by their place in the order in
which the first meetings with them took place. These employees’ accounts call
into question numerous details described in the judges’ statements… read more:
http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/death-of-judge-loya-testimonies-17-current-and-former-ravi-bhawan-employees-raise-questions-statements-four-judgessee also
