SC directs Maharashtra govt to give Justice Loya's documents to petitioners

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Maharashtra government to give all documents pertaining to the death of Justice B H Loya to petitioners seeking an independent probe into the circumstances of the death of the CBI special judge.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and M M Shantanagoudar passed the direction after the Maharashtra government submitted before the court documents, including Loya's postmortem report, in a sealed cover.

The judge was presiding over the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.

The bench, which was hearing two PILs seeking an independent probe into the death of Loya, adjourned the hearing for after a week without specifying any dates.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Maharashtra, told the bench that documents contained certain confidential material which cannot be shared in public and they cannot be given to petitioners -- a journalist and a Congress leader.

The counsel for the petitioners told the bench that they needed to look into these documents to argue the matter.

"It is a matter where they (petitioners) should know everything," the bench observed.

Salve later told the court that the documents could be shown to the petitioners' counsel but they should not make it public and they would mark the confidential documents.

The bench directed that all the documents be given to the petitioners within a week.

The petitioners' counsel also assured the court that they would not make any of the documents public.

Judge Loya had allegedly died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur on December 1, 2014, when he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleague's daughter.