[ By Bobby Anthony ]The Maharashtra government is open to reinvestigating the death of special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya in 2014, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh has stated.Special CBI Judge Loya, who was hearing the high-profile Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case of Gujarat, supposedly died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur on December 1,...
The Maharashtra government is open to reinvestigating the death of special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya in 2014, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh has stated.
Special CBI Judge Loya, who was hearing the high-profile Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case of Gujarat, supposedly died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur on December 1, 2014, when he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleague's daughter.
"Our government is open to reinvestigating the Loya death case. Some people are meeting me today to demand that the case be reopened. I will hear them out and if necessary, the case will be reinvestigated," Deshmukh told reporters.
Asked if Loya's family members were meeting him, the Deshmukh said, "I don't want to disclose that".
Earlier, Maharashtra state minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCD) leader Nawab Malik too stated that the Maharashtra government will consider reinvestigating Judge Loya’s death if there is evidence.
At the time of his death on December 1, 2014, Judge Loya was handling the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, in which Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah was an accused.
“The government will consider reopening of Judge Loya's death case if any complaint is received with substantial evidence,” Malik had told reporters in Mumbai.
Questions were raised on whether Loya’s death was natural after a report was published in November 2017, in which Justice Loya’s family said that the circumstances of his death were suspicious and that he had been under pressure to deliver a favorable judgment. There were immediate demands for the Supreme Court to treat these questions seriously.
However, in April 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that Justice Loya died of “natural causes”. It said that there was no reason to not believe judicial officers who were present with Loya at the time of his death.
It accused the petitioners of trying to “malign the judiciary”, called their petitions “scandalous and amounting to criminal contempt” and dismissed pleas for an independent inquiry. In July 2018, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking a review of this judgment.