The Wire: New Delhi: Thursday, June 14, 2018.
As part of
its investigation into the death of judge Judge B.H. Loya, The Caravan’s latest
report has revealed that the Maharashtra government concealed documents which
are crucial to the case from the Supreme Court. The documents, that have been
obtained via the Right to Information Act, offer a conflicting view of what the
state of Maharashtra told the Supreme Court in relation to the sequence of events
and the reasons that led judge Loya to Nagpur in December 2014 where he died
under suspicious circumstances.
According to
the report, on November 27, an official letter (EST 1114/Q/2014) from the
Nagpur office of the department of law and judiciary informed a public works
division about reserving a ‘VIP Air-Conditioned Suit in Ravi Bhavan’. Ravi
Bhavan is a government-operated guest house in Nagpur where Loya is supposed to
have been staying at the time of his death.
The letter
said, “From Mumbai Hon’ble Shri B.J. Loya [sic] and Hon’ble Shri Vinay Joshi,
these both District and Session Judges Mumbai, will be staying from early
morning of 30.11.2014 till 7 am of 1.12.2014 for government work. It is
requested that for their stay one V.I.P. Air Conditioned Suit with two cots be
reserved.”
Dated
November 27, the letter came only three days prior to the intervening night of
November 30 and December 1, when Loya died.
As per
records obtained by The Caravan, the names of both Joshi and Loya are missing
from the occupancy register of Ravi Bhavan. While the register has entries for
three rooms, it does not contain any information about who occupied them and
when. “The fields for noting those particulars have been struck through. Such
blank entries are strange, since an entry should only be created in the
register when a room becomes occupied,” the report read.
An earlier
report of The Caravan had found that the pages of the occupancy register had
been tampered with. In December 2017, Milind Pakhale, a Maharashtra-based
lawyer, lodged a police complaint alleging that entries that had been made by
him in the occupancy register on December 30, 2014, had been manipulated.
The letter of
November 27 also mentions that Loya was travelling to Nagpur ‘for government
work’. This directly contradicts what the State Intelligence Department has
held as the reasons for Loya’s trip to Nagpur: ‘Judge Loya was in Nagpur to
attend the wedding in the family of a colleague on 30 November 2014.’
“The SID
report made no mention at all of an official trip, or of Vinay Joshi who is
currently the principal district judge of the Thane district court,” The
Caravan’s report read.
The letter
that has now emerged makes clear that a separate room had been arranged for
judge Loya and Vinay Joshi. Judge Shriram Modak who according to the SID was
with Loya in Nagpur in his written statement to the SID stated that he, Loya
and Kulkarni (the third judge with them) stayed together in one room at Ravi
Bhavan.
“It remains
unclear why they would do so if separate accommodation had already been
arranged for Loya,” the report read.
The latest
findings raise questions about the Maharashtra government’s submission before
the Supreme court, which claim that Loya travelled to Nagpur to attend the
wedding of his colleague Swapna Joshi’s daughter. The letter obtained through
the RTI has revealed a conflicting turn of events which suggest that Loya, in
fact, travelled ‘for work’.
Additional
records have also revealed that the purpose of travel for Loya and Vinay Joshi
was distinct from that of Loya’s other colleagues who travelled at the same
time. The letter, on behalf of Swapna Joshi, requesting eight rooms be made
available at Ravi Bhavan between November 29 and December was dated November
19. While the letter seeking accommodation for Loya was issued eight days later
on November 27, implying that he was initially not a part of the group that was
meant to go to Nagpur for the wedding.
“Someone with
the necessary powers in the Maharashtra government apparently decided that Loya
was to travel to Nagpur and stay at Ravi Bhawan on the stated dates. Who that
was is unclear. Instructions regarding an official visit by a judge in Loya’s
position, at the head of a special Central Bureau of Investigation court in
Mumbai, could only have come from officials in the Maharashtra capital,” The
Caravan’s report stated.