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Informist, Sunday, Mar. 23, 2025

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court on Saturday formed a three-member committee to conduct an enquiry into allegations that a huge pile of cash was found at Justice Yashwant Varma's residence. The three-member panel consists of Sheel Nagu, chief justice of the High Court of Punjab & Haryana; G.S. Sandhawalia, chief justice of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh, and  Anu Sivaraman, judge of the High Court of Karnataka. The chief justice of the Delhi High Court has been asked not to assign any judicial work to Justice Varma for the time being, the apex court said.

According to a news report in The Times of India on Friday, a huge pile of cash was found at Justice Varma's bungalow after a fire broke out at his residence on Mar. 14. When the fire broke out, Justice Varma was not in town and his family members called the fire brigade, which found the cash and later, the police was informed, the report said. It added that following the recovery of the cash, the collegium of the Supreme Court proposed transferring Justice Varma to the Allahabad High Court.

On Friday, the Supreme Court had said that Delhi High Court Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, on receiving the information, commenced an in-house enquiry, collecting evidence and information. In the report submitted to the apex court, Chief Justice Upadhyaya said that according to Justice Varma, the fire broke out in a store room that was accessible to all, including servants, gardeners, and Central Public Works Department personnel, and wasn't kept locked.

The report said that Justice Varma had a look inside the room and it was found that all the walls had gone black on account of the fire. The report also refers to half burnt cash found lying in some sacks in the room. Photographs and videos of the burnt cash have been uploaded by the apex court on its website. 

The report said that on being shown the photographs, shared by the commissioner of Police, Varma expressed apprehension about a conspiracy against him. On Mar. 20, Chief Justice Upadhyaya shared the photographs and the videos with Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna. Thereafter, the Delhi High Court chief justice received a communication from the Chief Justice of India intimating the proposal to repatriate Justice Varma to the Allahabad High Court.

On Friday, the Supreme Court said that Justice Varma's transfer was independent of the inquiry against him in the issue relating to the cash found at his residence. 

According to the report, prima facie, the inquiry does not reveal the possibility of entry or access to the room by any person other than those residing in the bungalow, the servants, the gardeners, and Central Public Works Department personnel, if any. Accordingly, the Delhi High Court chief justice said in his report that prima facie, the entire matter warrants a deeper probe. After receiving the report, Chief Justice Khanna asked Justice Varma to account for the presence of cash in the room located in his premises and explain its source and who removed the cash from that place.

In his response, Justice Varma said after the fire was doused and he went back to the scene of the incident, he saw no cash or currency at the site. No cash was ever placed in that storeroom either by him or his family members, Varma said, and strongly denounced the suggestion that the alleged cash belonged to him. The suggestion that one would store cash in an open, freely accessible and commonly used storeroom near the staff quarters or in an outhouse verged on the incredible and incredulous, said Justice Varma. His cash withdrawals, made from time to time, were all documented and always through regular banking channels, the use of UPI applications and cards, said Justice Varma. 

"What baffles me is the complete absence of any sacks of allegedly burnt currency which were ever recovered or seized. We categorically assert that neither my daughter, PS (personal staff) nor household staff were shown these so-called sacks of burnt currency. I stand by my consistent position that when they accessed the storeroom, there was no currency, burnt or otherwise, which could be seen," he said. Justice Varma said he would be grateful if an enquiry was conducted with respect to his functioning as a judge and the perception of the legal fraternity. He said his family members had not removed the cash from the premises. 

Justice Varma had enrolled as an advocate in 1992 and practised matters relating to constitutional, labour and industrial legislation, corporate law, taxation, and allied branches of law. He was a special counsel for the Allahabad High Court from 2006 till his elevation as a judge in 2014, when he became an additional judge. In 2016, Justice Varma took oath as a permanent judge in the Allahabad High Court and in 2021, he was transferred to the Delhi High Court.  End

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

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