A fresh public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Bombay High Court, seeking the setting up of a Constitutional 7-judge bench to hear the plea on the death of former CBI Special Judge B H Loya.

At a time when a PIL is pending before the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on the cause of Justice Loya’s death, social activist Sanjay R Bhalerao moved the Bombay High Court seeking among other things the reference of his petition to a 7-member HC bench and setting up of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the circumstances leading to Justice Loya’s death.

Alluding to the nature of the investigation team that he wanted the HC to set up in the case, the petitioner urged the court to the State Home Department to treat his petition as First Information Report (FIR) and set up an SIT of three IPS Officers from States other than the States ruled by the BJP or its coalition partners to look into the case under the supervision of the HC bench.

The filing of a fresh PIL before the Bombay High Court comes eight days after all three judges of its Nagpur bench — Justice SB Shukre, Justice SM Modak and Justice Swapna Joshi — recused themselves from hearing a petition filed Advocate Satish Uke alleging that Judge Loya, who died while presiding over the trial in the alleged fake encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh.  The petition before the Nagpur bench has been filed by Advocate Satish Uke who has alleged that Justice Loya was "poisoned" with a radioactive isotope.

It may be recalled that Justice Loya (48) had died of a “heart attack” on December 1, 2014 when he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleague’s daughter. At that time, Justice Loya was hearing the alleged Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case — in which BJP‘s current national president Amit Shah was one of the accused.

Justice Loya’s family as well as sections of the media had earlier raised several questions about the circumstances leading to Loya’s sudden death. There were also reports in a section of the media raising suspicions over the cause of Judge Loya's death.

Advocate Nitin Satpute,  who has filed the PIL in the Bombay High Court on behalf of Sanjay R. Bhalerao, has in all made 25 respondents in the case, including the Registrar of the Supreme Court, the Bombay High Court Registrar-General, Maharashtra Home department, CBI, ACB,  several Maharashtra government departments and, senior police officers, medical officials, and the Inspector-General. the Special Protection Group (SPG) of the Prime Minister.

Among other prayers, the petitioner urged the court to direct CBI and public interest litigant Satish Uke to file affidavits and furnish all relevant documents and evidence in connection with Justice Loya’s death to the court.