After Loya case verdict, SC website down, reportedly hacked

The website of the Supreme Court of India (supremecourtofindia.nic.in) was inaccessible on Thursday afternoon after it was reportedly hacked 30 minutes after the court delivered the verdict in the BH Loya case.

Sources in the Supreme Court confirmed this and said the technical wing that hosts the website detected a hacking attempt and pulled down the website as a security measure. The website will remain down for about two hours before it is functional again. A fortnight ago several government websites crashed, leading to speculation that Chinese hackers were behind it. However, the national cyber security chief Gulshan Rai said the 10 websites hosted by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) went down after a hardware failure.

The apex court had dismissed pleas seeking an independent probe into the death of special CBI judge BH Loya, who was hearing the alleged Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. The court ruled that Loya died of natural causes and the petitions were a serious attempt to scandalise and obstruct the course of justice. The Supreme Court also condemned the petitioners for referring to cases not related to the Judge Loya case, and said “unfounded aspersions” were cast on high court judges and insinuations were made that one individual was controlling the judiciary.