NEW DELHI: Bhartiya Janata Party President Amit Shah is in the dock on a sensational report in the latest issue of Delhi’s Caravan monthly English magazine on the mysterious death of a CBI judge in Mumbai who refused to accept the bribe of Rs 100 crore to give him a clean chit in Gujarat’s Sohrabuddin encounter killing case of 2005.
Three years after the judge’ death, his family has broken the silence,putting question marks on a replacement judge, within 29 days of his death, declaring Amit Shah not guilty. The family members have raised multiple concerns over the circumstances in which the 48-year old was found dead. All their queries were brushed aside, saying he died of a massive cardiac arrest.
Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya, who passed away under mysterious circumstances in December 2014 while on a trip to Nagpur, was allegedly offered the money by no less than then Bombay High Court Chief Justice Mohit Shah for a judgment in favour of Shah, who was the prime accused in the case as a former junior home minister in the then Narendra Modi government.
The magazine carries an account of the late judge’s sister Anuradha Biyani on how then Chief Justice “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.” She has alleged that “my brother was offered a bribe of 100 crore in return for a favourable judgment; Mohit Shah, the chief justice, made the offer himself.”
The Congress jumped over the disclosure to demand an inquiry into the whole episode. Party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi asserted at the daily AICC press briefing here on Wednesday that this is a fit case for an independent inquiry under the supervision of the Supreme Court to probe allegation against the then High Court chief justice as also the charge of the deceased judge’s son that Chief Justice Shah refused to set up an inquiry commission to probe his father’s mysterious death.
Many senior Congress leaders in Gujarat, including the party’s national spokesman Shakti Sinh Gohil, were busy on the Twitter, wondering if Amit Shah had a hand in Judge Loya’s murder.
Journalist Niranjan Takle, who has pieced together the details in Caravan, says Judge Loya’s father Harkishan also told him that his son had told him that he had offers to deliver a favourable judgment in exchange for money and a house in Mumbai. The family members revealed inconsistencies in the reported account of the death, the procedures followed after his death, and the condition of the judge’s body when it was handed over to the family. Their requests for an inquiry commission to look into the death had fallen on deaf ears.
Shortly after Loya’s death, a new judge, MB Gosavi, was given the task of deciding the case. Gosavi heard the parties for three days, before reserving judgment on December 17, 2014. The judgment, whereby Amit Shah was discharged, was pronounced on December 30.
This judgment was then appealed in the Bombay High Court, which dismissed the same for want of locus. A petition in the Supreme Court challenging Amit Shah’s discharge also met with a similar fate last year.
The manner in which the trial took place itself has been called into question. The fact that three different judges heard the case was a direct violation of a Supreme Court order in the petition filed by the CBI to transfer the case out of Gujarat that the same judge should hear the case from start to finish. In September 2012, Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai directed the Administrative Committee of the Bombay High Court to “ensure that the trial should be conducted from beginning to end by the same officer.”
Nonetheless, the first judge was transferred out on June 25, 2014, less than a month after Modi took over as the prime minister. That judge’s fault was that he had reprimanded Amit Shah for not appearing in the court even once.
Judge B H Loya, who took over the case in October that year, allowed Shah exemption from personal appearance but “only till till charges are framed.” He expressed displeasure on Shah not appearing in the court on a date when he was present in Mumbai. The next date of hearing was fixed on December 15, but Judge Loya was dead on December 1.
