NEW DELHI: Justice Yashwant Varma of Allahabad high court may have submitted his resignation to President Droupadi Murmu on Friday, but he went down crying foul. In a letter simultaneously addressed to Supreme Court Justice Aravind Kumar, who is head of the judges’ inquiry committee, the controversial HC judge faulted the committee’s procedure to test veracity of the charges related to the discovery of a huge amount unaccounted burnt cash from his official residence. Questioning the committee’s decision to proceed without any cogent evidence against him, Justice Varma said that such a procedure has left him with no option but to withdraw, as his further participation would legitimise a process that “calls upon me to answer the unanswerable – where did the money come from”. “I have, in parallel, addressed a communication to Her Excellency, the Hon’ble President of India,” he said. Videos recorded by first responders – firemen and police – of the fire incident at his residence in central Delhi on March 14-15 night last year, and later uploaded on the Supreme Court website, proved the undoing of Justice Varma. If their evidence before the committee was damning, it got sharper during their cross-examination by Justice Varma’s lawyers, as they graphically narrated the discovery of cash and conduct of the people present in the judge’s house on that night. Justice Varma was considered very close to Justice D Y Chandrachud, who had a two-year tenure as CJI from Nov 2022 till Nov 2024. An SC bench headed by him had, in March 2024, quashed a CBI FIR and an ECIR by the Enforcement Directorate against Justice Varma, who as a lawyer and prior to appointment as an HC judge, had figured in it as a non-executive director of Simbhaoli Sugar Ltd in an alleged bank loan fraud case. One of his main grouses was that the committee had shifted the onus of proving innocence on him based on evidence gathered by the inquiry committee constituted by then CJI Sanjiv Khanna. The inquiry report could not have served as evidence or relevant for any future proceedings, he said. His decision to challenge the inquiry proceedings, its report and the recommendation of then CJI Khanna for the initiation of removal motion was dismissed by an SC bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and A G Masih on Aug 7 last year. Justice Varma said the storeroom, from where the burnt cash was allegedly found and where video was recorded, was never seized by police. Moreover, since the room was accessible to all, it cannot be the judge’s responsibility to keep track of who keeps what in the sprawling premises of an official bungalow that includes the residential quarters for house helps. Justice Varma said he leaves it to posterity to judge “whether such an obligation can ever be discharged or be justifiably placed upon occupants of such premises”. He said the allegations and innuendos levelled against him lacked any basis or evidence. Asserting that there had not been any cogent evidence to back the charges against him, Justice Varma said in a process unknown to the law of criminal trial. “The burden of proof has been effectively reversed without any foundational case being made out.” “I am profoundly disappointed that, despite the solemn nature of these proceedings, which carry the potential consequence of removing a sitting high court judge from constitutional office, the Commission (Committee) did not intervene despite the shocking manner in which proceedings unfolded,” Justice Varma said.
