New Delhi: The Apex Court on Thursday dismissed the PIL seeking an independent probe into the death of Judge BH Loya in December 2014. The “death” occurred at a time when he was trying the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.

The petition for the probe was called as ‘frivolous’ by the apex court and commented that it was ‘bereft of any truth’ and also an attempt to malign the judiciary. The court also said that it was very clear that judge Loya’s death was a natural one and there was ‘not a shred of doubt’ about it.

It also said that the petitioners’ advocates Dushyant Dave, Indira Jaising and Prashant Bhushan launched a frontal attack on the judiciary by trying to egg the Supreme Court to disbelieve the three judicial officers who were along with Loya to Nagpur and stayed with him at a guest house and asserted that the judge had died of a heart attack.

The court, during its judgement, went on to say that it would have also been ideal to initiate contempt proceedings against the petitioner in such a case where a political rivalry is brought to court to malign the judiciary.

A bench of CJI Dipak Misra, Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, in a scathing condemnation, said that during the arguments counsel forgot to maintain institutional civility towards the Supreme Court’s judges and made wild allegations.

The PILs were were meant to provide succour to the downtrodden and voiceless, have now become a way to settle business and political rivalry, the court added.

The court clearly conveyed its displeasure against such petitions, saying that these days an avalanche of PILs were being filed to settle business and political scores and the judiciary was unnecessarily made to spend its precious time looking into such PILs, which led to delay in giving justice in other important. Cases. “Courts are not the place to settle business for the political rivalry, which should be fought in markets or elections,” it said while reading out its judgment.

Loya had, as per the allegation, died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur on December 1, 2014, when he had gone to attend the wedding ceremony of a colleague’s daughter.

The Supreme Court bench had on March 16 reserved the judgement on the pleas.

The Maharashtra government had argued in the Supreme Court that all pleas seeking an independent probe into judge Loya’s death were motivated and aimed at targeting “one individual” in the guise of upholding the rule of law.

It had criticized heavily on alleged accusations, bullying and browbeating of judges in the Apex court by some activist lawyers in the Loya case and said that the judiciary and judicial officers need to be saved from such averments.

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