ML Update
A CPI(ML) Weekly News Magazine
Vol. 20 | No. 48 | 21- 27 November 2017
Disturbing Questions Over Death of CBI Judge Justice Loya
Special
CBI Judge Justice Brijgopal Harkishan Loya, who was hearing the
Sohrabuddin murder case in which Narendra Modi’s lieutenant Amit Shah
and several top Gujarat police officers were implicated, died suddenly
at a Government guest house in Nagpur on 30 November 2014 – two weeks
before the next hearing in the case. Within a month of the death of the
48-year-old Justice Loya, his successor had discharged Amit Shah in the
Sohrabuddin murder case. Justice Loya’s predecessor, who had been tough
on Shah, had been transferred just a day before a hearing date he had
fixed in which he had required Shah to be present. Justice Loya too had
shown every sign of diligence in the case rather than leniency towards
Shah.
Now,
three years on, the late Justice Loya’s family members have raised
several disturbing questions about the circumstances of his death. His
sister has alleged that before his death, Justice Loya had received
threats to his life, and had also been offered a bribe by none less than
a serving chief justice of the Bombay High Court, to pressurize him to
give a favourable judgement in the Sohrabuddin murder case.
His
family members have cited several suspicious circumstances surrounding
his death. They say he was very fit, with no history of cardiac
problems, so they doubt that he died of a sudden heart attack. They
claim that his body, when it was returned to them, had bloodstains on
his clothes that were not mentioned in the post-mortem report. They ask
who the mysterious person was who has signed every page of the
post-mortem report claiming to be a Nagpur-based ‘paternal cousin’ of
the judge (he had no such cousin.) They ask why there are so many large
variations in the accounts of the actual time of his death. They ask why
an RSS activist Ishwar Baheti, was the one who was giving Justice
Loya’s family members information about the plans to transport his body
and claiming to be coordinating everything? Why was Baheti the one to
return the judge’s cell phone to the family, and why was the phone wiped
of all data, including an SMS warning him to “stay safe from these
people”?
At
the time of Justice Loya’s death too, Sohrabuddin’s brother, the
complainant in the murder case, had raised questions about Justice
Loya’s sudden death that was so convenient for Amit Shah. The serious
and disturbing questions raised by Justice Loya’s family members also
serve as a reminder of the murky circumstances of the Sohrabuddin fake
encounter. Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauser Bi had been abducted by
Gujarat police officers. Sohrabuddin had been killed and his death
disguised as an ‘encounter’; while Kauser Bi, a witness to his
abduction, had been raped, killed, and buried. Tulsiram Prajapati,
another witness to the abduction of Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi, had
repeatedly told the court that he feared for his life; he too was killed
by Gujarat police officers. Gujarat police personnel themselves have
borne witness to these killings. Moreover there are phone records
showing Amit Shah, then Gujarat Home Minister, in close contact with the
accused police officers at the time of the killings.
The
suspicions being raised by his family members about the manner and
timing of Justice Loya’s death are a chilling reminder of the many murky
and murderous crimes that cast shadows on the Modi-Shah duo during
their reign in Gujarat. In 2013, DG Vanzara, one of the Gujarat police
officers accused in the murders of Sohrabuddin, Kauser Bi and Tulsiram
Prajapati, had publicly implied that the fake encounter murders were
part of a “conscious policy” of the Gujarat Government headed by Modi,
which had yielded rich political returns for Modi by helping him don a
“halo of Brave Chief Minister”; and that the Gujarat Government had been
“inspiring, guiding and monitoring our actions from the very close
quarters.”
As
Amit Shah, Rajasthan Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria, and a series of
senior Gujarat police officers implicated in these murder were
discharged one after another by courts, the CBI has, true to its
reputation as a “caged parrot,” failed to challenge these judgements.
Will
the questions raised by Justice Loya’s family members about his death
ever be answered? Will the fake encounter victims of Gujarat ever get
justice? Or will the perpetrators be able to use political power, money,
threats, and violence to bury truth and justice and get away with
murder?
Democracy-
and justice-loving people of India will always keep these questions
alive, until the perpetrators are brought to book.
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