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The Pioneer
GRAMMAR OF JUSTICE
…………In contemporary India, where the wheels of justice turn exceedingly slowly but they do, in the main, turn, those who would hang someone on the basis of their bias are utterly shameless in using justice as an irregular verb to aid their political, business, professional or personal interests and rivalries as the Supreme Court pointed out in its scathing order on Thursday rejecting a bunch of Public Interest Litigations (PILs) asking for a probe into the natural death of CBI Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya who was hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. For this lot, deeply illiberal and implacable foes of the Rule of Law in this country, it’s always like so — if the court agrees with them it is upholding the law and if it doesn’t it’s a travesty of justice!
In rejecting the demand for a probe into the death of Judge Loya iterating the principle that while all deaths are unfortunate not every death is a murder and calling out the motivated, scurrilous and, frankly, criminally defamatory utterances of the petitioners and the despicable conduct of their counsels who made wild and sweeping allegations against anyone who did not agree with their narrative, a three-judge Bench of the highest court in the land headed by the Chief Justice of India also called them out for effectively trying to ‘fix’ BJP president Amit Shah……………
The Times of India
Iron verdict
SC provides judicial closure to Judge Loya’s death, but political slugfest will continue till April 20, 2018. Dismissing a set of PILs demanding a court-monitored SIT probe into the death of Judge BH Loya on December 1, 2014, the Supreme Court was stinging in its criticism of the petitioners – accusing them of scandalising the judiciary and equating their actions with contempt of court. Supreme Court found no reason to disbelieve the statements of four judicial officers present with Loya before his death. It also slammed the political intentions behind the PILs…….
DNA
SC clears the air
Oppn’s hollow cause of Judge Loya’s death
The conspiracy theorists who smelt “wrongdoing” in the death of Judge BH Loya have to not only accept defeat, but also grapple with an angry Supreme Court, which has taken “strong exception to the insinuations made that one individual controls the judiciary”. While dismissing the petitions seeking independent probe into Judge Loya’s death, the three-judge bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said: “There is no reason to disbelieve the sequence of events leading to the death as narrated by the four judicial officers namely Shrikant Kulkarni, Shriram Modak, R Rathi and Vijay Kumar Barde and the assertions of Bombay High Court Justices Bhushan Gawai and Sunil Sukhre………
Attempt to undermine public faith in judiciary’
To claims by petitioners that “one man” (Amit Shah) was controlling the judiciary was nothing but an attempt to undermine public faith in the judiciary and credibility of judicial process, the judgment said.
Justice Chandrachud said the petitioners should not use the courts to settle political scores. “Political rivalries should be settled in that great hall of democracy… Rule of law should not be reduced to a charade,” he observed.
“Industry of vested interests”
Justice Chandrachud described how PIL litigation had been brazenly misused to become an “industry of vested interests”. The court flagged the avalanche of PILs entering the Supreme Court and the High Courts, creating arrears and severely taking a toll on court work.
The court dismissed the Loya PILs, holding that there was no reasonable suspicion to show that Judge Loya’s death was unnatural.