Special CBI court judge Brijmohan H Loya, who was hearing the Sohrabuddin encounter case in which BJP president Amit Shah is an accused, died of a heart attack in Nagpur early Monday morning . Loya was in Nagpur to attend the wedding in a city judge’s family on Sunday. He developed chest pain early in the morning at his cottage in the government rest house Ravi Bhavan. He was rushed to a hospital where he was declared dead. His last rites will be held in Latur on December 2. Loya served as the Registrar of the Bombay High Court for almost a year, until July 2014, when he was assigned the encounter cases from Gujarat, including the Sohrabuddin case. Sources close to him said that Loya had sound medical history. Born in Latur, Loya was to celebrate his 52nd birthday on December 12. The complainant’s lawyer in the Sohrabuddin encounter case, Vijay Hiremath, told Newsline he had once had a tough time against the counsel of the 38 accused in the case. “A battery of lawyers were contesting my locus standi in the case. I was not allowed to speak or argue for my client. Right then, Loya told the defence lawyers that they were a team of 30 lawyers and I was doing it all alone and they should have the courtesy to at least hear me out,” Hiremath said. Judges and the staff at the City Civil and Sessions Court were in a state of shock when the news of Loya’s death reached them Monday morning. “He was the most jovial person I knew,” his court staff recalled. meghna.yelluru@expressindia.com
