The press conference addressed by the son of late judge BH Loya may have provided additional ammunition to the Supreme Court Bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra to dismiss petitions seeking an independent inquiry into the judge’s sudden and mysterious death.

Law courts in India are known to dismiss even Public Interest Litigation(PIL) on the ground of locus. When the PILs were first entertained by Justice PL Bhagwati and others, the argument was that since many of the victims were too poor, too ill-informed and too intimidated to approach the highest court of the land, any ‘friend of society’ should be allowed to seek justice on his/her behalf.

That was the reason why the apex court converted even complaints and grievances received on post-cards into PIL. But since then the court has come to look down upon PILs as ‘Private Interest Litigation’ and suspect the motivation of the ‘professional’ petitioners.

A favourite weapon of the court to dismiss troublesome and inconvenient petitions is to question the locus standi of the petitioners. In the judge Loya case, the court may well say that since the Bombay High Court and the judge’s family say they are convinced that judge Loya died a natural death, why indeed should the apex court entertain pleas by ‘outsiders to the case’ for an independent probe?

A counter-argument is that that it is not for the family of the judge to say they are not interested in pursuing what is potentially a criminal case, an investigation into a criminal act. It is like the family of a rape victim saying that they have reached a compromise with the rapist, an out of court settlement, and hence the rapist should escape prosecution. Unfortunately the judiciary in several cases have actually followed this logic.

An independent probe will certainly be in the interest of everyone concerned and set all doubts at rest. And any inquiry, whether ordered by the court or conducted by a citizens’ tribunal, will need to answer the following questions: