The Maharashtra government will consider reinvestigating Central Bureau of Investigation Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya’s death if there is substantial evidence, state minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Nawab Malik said on Wednesday, PTI reported.

At the time of his death on December 1, 2014, Judge Loya was handling the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, in which Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah was an accused.

“The government will consider reopening of judge BH Loya death case if any complaint is received with substantial evidence,” Malik told reporters in Mumbai after a three-hour meeting of NCP ministers in the Shiv Sena-led government in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress are in alliance in the state.

Malik added that the case will be reopened if the complaint “contains some substance”. “There will be no inquiry in the matter without any reason,” he said.

The meeting was led by NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who had said last month that the case would be reinvestigated if there was a demand.

Questions were raised on whether Loya’s death was natural after The Caravan published a report in November 2017, in which Loya’s family said the circumstances of his death were suspicious and that he had been under pressure to deliver a favourable judgement. There were immediate demands for the Supreme Court to treat these questions seriously.

In April 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that Loya died of “natural causes”. It said that there was no reason to not believe the judicial officers who were present with Loya at the time of his death. It accused the petitioners of trying to “malign the judiciary”, called their petitions “scandalous and amounting to criminal contempt” and dismissed pleas for an independent inquiry. In July 2018, the court dismissed a petition seeking a review of this judgement.

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