The Congress has demanded an impartial probe by a Special Investigation Team into the death of Justice BH Loya, the CBI judge in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter killing case.

Senior advocates and leaders of the Congress, Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid and Vivek Tankha told reporters on Wednesday that judges, advocates and journalists are not allowed to work freely and it is a blot on the democracy.

Sibal said Loya was under tremendous pressure to expedite the hearing in the case and to pass an order favourable to the accused. He said Loya got a draft order from “someone” in 2014 on the case and he was under pressure to sign on it.

Sibal was accompanied by Satish Uke, an advocate from Nagpur city. Sibal said Loya approached Uke in October 2014 through Shrikant Khandalkar, another advocate, and sought their help. Uke and Khandalkar, with the help of another advocate Prakash Thombre, took the matter to senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, but since there was no evidence the matter could not be raised in the Supreme Court then.

Sibal said Khandalkar began getting threats after the death of Justice Loya. “Khandalkar’s body was found in district court premises of Nagpur after he allegedly fell from the eighth story of the court complexe,” Sibal said.

Thumre, a retired judge, also started getting threats, and according to Sibal, he also died under suspicious circumstances during a train journey. There was an attempt to murder Uke too, Sibal said. He said no FIRs have been filed on Thumre’s death so far. Uke pointed out that there were severe discrepancies in the post mortem report of Justice Loya.

“All these murders are connected. Only an SIT probe by impartial officers will bring out the truth,” Sibal added.

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