Apoorva Mandhani: Judge Loya's Confidants Died Mysterious Deaths
NB: This report on the deaths of Judge Loya and his two friends appeared in 2018. Our 'free and unfettered' media continues to ignore this matter; as it has ignored the suicide of an ex Chief Minister who alleged high-level corruption in the judiciary; and has also failed to pursue the manner in which criminal cases involving allies of the Sangh Parivar seem to end up in favour of the accused, with no one being held responsible for heinous crimes.
see also
Tavleen Singh: Without rule of law there can be no democracy
Do our leaders want to certify political assassination?
The government has protected lynchers;
and covered up the death of
a judge: a relative of the Maharashtra CM threatened a
lawyer pursuing the matter. The Sangh and its allies have indulged in sabotage of
justice: in the Bhima Koregaon case, they have misused executive power to protect their
cadre. They have secured dismissal of cases in which their associates
were implicated, by causing court records to disappear as in the Aseemanand case.
There have been 67 'encounter'
killings since March 2017. V. L. Solanki, the police officer who worked on
the Sohrabuddin case says the government is trying to silence him:
'If a sitting judge can die suddenly, I am just an inconsequential retired
police inspector. The government and the police can go to any extent to ensure
everyone accused in the case gets a clean chit. They can kill too.'
So much for the new policy of zero tolerance of terrorism. (Zero for some, sky is the limit for others). So much for the justice system we may look forward to under the utopia called Hindu Rashtra. To the op-ed writers who have reduced journalism to Orwellian propaganda, I can only paraphrase (ironically) L K Advani's comment about the behaviour of the media during the Emergency: You were asked to bend, why are you crawling?
It is ironic because, having sown the wind of communal fanaticism, Mr Advani has been rewarded for his efforts by being placed in the "useless idiot" category of retired firebrands of the Sangh Parivar. Even PranabDa is more useful to them. But there are those who are paying a much heavier price. Judge Loya's family and the families of his dead friends, for example. Not to mention the family of Pehlu Khan, whom no one killed. And numbers of journalists who have been forced out of their jobs for beng committed professionals. DS
It is ironic because, having sown the wind of communal fanaticism, Mr Advani has been rewarded for his efforts by being placed in the "useless idiot" category of retired firebrands of the Sangh Parivar. Even PranabDa is more useful to them. But there are those who are paying a much heavier price. Judge Loya's family and the families of his dead friends, for example. Not to mention the family of Pehlu Khan, whom no one killed. And numbers of journalists who have been forced out of their jobs for beng committed professionals. DS
At a press conference held on Wednesday, Congress leaders and Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Salman
Khurshid and Vivek Tankha demanded an independent probe into the death of
special CBI Judge B.H. Loya, raising suspicions regarding the death of two of
Judge Loya's associates as well.
Asserting that the "truth
is to be investigated Loya talked of pressure and right now democracy is under
threat", Mr. Sibal explained that his interactions with a
whistle-blower in the case lawyer Satish Uike revealed that Judge Loya had been
handed over a "draft order" with a direction to approve it before
31 October, 2014.
Mr. Uike had been
introduced to Judge Loya by Advocate Shrikant Khandalkar and retired District
Judge Prakash Thombre. All three of them were then informed about and given the
copies of the draft order by Judge Loya, who had sought their help in dealing
with the "pressure" that he was facing to exonerate the
accused in the Sohrabuddin murder case. While Mr. Thombre and Mr. Uike
travelled to Delhi to seek help from a few Senior Advocates, they had returned
back disheartened.
Soon after, Judge Loya
officially died of a cardiac arrest on 1 December, 2014 in Nagpur, where he had
gone to attend a wedding. Subsequently, both Mr. Khandalkar and Mr. Thombre
died mysterious deaths, Mr. Sibal alleged, after confiding in Mr. Uike
regarding the threats that they were receiving from Nagpur.
He alleged that while
Mr. Khandalkar was "pushed" from the 8th floor of a District
Court building in November, 2015, Mr. Thombre passed away during a train
journey in May, 2016. Mr. Uike was also threatened, he said, when around 5,000
kilograms of iron fell on the roof of his office barely moments after he had
exited. The Congress leaders
also narrated the incidents that led to Judge Loya's death, especially highlighting
the fact that his security was withdrawn from 20 November, 2014 to 2 December,
2014. Noting that the reason given for this was that his security officer was
unwell, Mr. Sibal questioned the absence of alternative officers for providing
security to Judge Loya.
Mr. Sibal also put on
record the register of the VIP guest house where Judge Loya reportedly stayed
during his visit in Nagpur. The register, he said, neither contained Judge
Loya's name nor Judge Shriram Modak's name, who he allegedly stayed with. Mr. Uike, who was
present at the conference, referred to Judge Loya's post-mortem report to claim
that it had been tampered with as the papers showed that the doctor conducted
two post-mortems at the same time. Judge Loya's 'viscera forwarding form' was
also repeatedly referred to, to highlight such discrepancies.
Mr. Sibal, then,
raised questions such as, "Why
was Judge J.T. Utpal, Judge Loya's predecessor in Sohrabuddin Fake encounter
case transferred from hearing the case despite Supreme Court order specifying
that the same Judge will hear the matter from start to finish?... Why didn't Bombay High Court lodge an FIR when Judge Loya's sister
alleged that Justice Mohit Shah offered him a bribe of Rs. 100 crore?... Why
didn't the judiciary take up the matter? Who was being saved and why?"
With such suspicions, he appealed for an investigation by an
independent SIT, which should not contain any CBI or NIA officer. In the
absence of such investigation, he said, the party would "go to every
village to tell them about the injustice being meted out". The democracy,
he said, is in "peril", referring to the press conference held by the
four sitting Supreme Court Judges.
The Caravan report: The conference comes at a time when the Supreme Court is hearing two
petitions demanding an independent probe into Judge Loya's death. The
allegations first appeared in two reports by The Caravan Magazine, which cited
interviews with Judge Loya’s relatives: his sister Anuradha Biyani, niece Nupur
Balaprasad Biyani and father Harkishan. According to the magazine, Judge Loya’s
wife Sharmila and son Anuj declined to speak since they feared for their lives.
As per the article, Judge Loya was in Nagpur for the 30 November, 2014
wedding of the daughter of another sitting Judge at the Mumbai Sessions Court,
Swapna Joshi. On 1 December, his family members received calls informing them
about his demise after suffering a massive cardiac arrest.
The investigative report by Mr. Niranjan Takle points out glaring
inconsistencies in the cardiac arrest story. It highlights inconsistencies in
the reported account of the death. There were large variations in the precise
time of his death and that fact that Judge Loya’s phone was wiped clean of all
data before it was returned to the family. The Judge’s postmortem report was
also allegedly signed by maiyatacha chulatbhau, or paternal cousin, when
his family says there is no such person in the family. Further, his family
members had noticed blood on his clothes.
Another article had alleged that Justice Mohit Shah had offered Judge
Loya Rs. 100 crore for a judgment in favor of Mr. Amit Shah. The article had
quote the Judge’s sister, who claimed that Justice Shah would would call him
late at night to meet in civil dress and pressure him to issue the judgment as
soon as possible and to ensure that it is a positive judgment. “My brother was
offered a bribe of 100 crore in return for a favorable judgment. Mohit Shah,
the chief justice, made the offer himself.”
Shortly after Judge Loya’s death, a new Judge, M.B. Gosavi had
discharged Mr. Amit Shah, after hearing the parties for three days. The article
goes on to question the manner in which the trial took place, asserting that it
had violated a September 2012 Supreme Court order, that the Sohrabuddin trial should
be conducted from beginning to end by the same officer.
https://www.livelaw.in/judge-loyas-two-confidante-faced-mysterious-death-congress-alleges-demands-independent-probe/see also
Tavleen Singh: Without rule of law there can be no democracy
Do our leaders want to certify political assassination?
Tavleen Singh - Modernity or murder, Mr Modi? // Vipin Tripathi: Funds to help Pehlu Khan's family
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सत्य की हत्या
Samjhauta Express blast case verdict: ‘Who will answer for death of my five children?’
RSS organisations in Dehradun force two colleges to say they won’t admit Kashmiris
