Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 24: Ignoring the objections raised by the Allahabad High Court Bar Association, the Supreme Court Collegium on Monday recommended repatriation of the Delhi High Court judge Justice Yashwant Varma, from whose house a stash of burnt cash was allegedly recovered on the Holi day on March 14, back to Allahabad High Court, his parent organisation.
“The Supreme Court Collegium in its meetings held on 20th and 24th March 2025 has recommended repatriation of Mr Justice Yashwant Varma, Judge, High Court of Delhi, to the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad,” the Supreme Court said in a statement. The Delhi High Court Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya, too, had been of the prima facie opinion that the judge ought to be shifted out of the Capital in the interest of “better administration of justice.”
In a related development, a writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Monday seeking a direction to the police to register a First Information Report (FIR) and investigate the allegation of unaccounted money found on the official residential premises of Justice Varma. The petition, filed by Supreme Court advocate Mathews J. Nedumpara, further challenged the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court-appointed three-member committee to inquire into the affair. The petition said the committee has no jurisdiction to investigate the incident. The responsibility fell on the police to effectively and meaningfully investigate the allegations.
The Collegium’s recommendation to the government to move the judge has come despite a statement issued by the Allahabad High Court Bar Association objecting to Justice Varma’s transfer, going to the extent of saying that the Allahabad High Court was not a “trash bin.” The High Court Bar Association had even threatened to go desist from work sine die if the transfer happened.
Justice Varma is currently embroiled in a controversy over the alleged recovery of cash from a storeroom in his official residence in Delhi following a fire fighting operation on the Holi day. Earlier in the day, in keeping with the Supreme Court’s order, the Delhi High Court registry withdrew all judicial works assigned to Justice Varma and in its new roster assigned his work to Justice Subramanium Prasad and Justice Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar.
Justice Varma has dismissed the allegations, claiming he was being “indicted and defamed in the press.” But contrary to his clarification that the storeroom where the stack of the burnt currency was found was an open property and not linked to his residence, the inquiry report into the incident led by Delhi HC chief justice (CJ) Devendra Kumar Upadhyay submitted to the Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, said fire broke out on March 14 in a storeroom of the bungalow where Justice Varma was residing and that the storeroom was accessible only to the residents of the bungalow.
A video shared by Delhi Police Commissioner Sanjay Arora with CJI Sanjiv Khanna and Delhi HC CJ Upadhyay purportedly shows the burnt cash. Following the release of the report, CJI Khanna asked Delhi HC CJ Upadhyay to withdraw judicial work from Justice Varma.
CJI Khanna, after receiving the report, asked CJ Upadhyay to get a response from Justice Varma regarding the presence of “unaccounted cash,” its “source,” and who removed the “burnt cash” on the morning of March 15. Justice Varma was also instructed not to delete any phone numbers, messages, or data from his mobile phone. An official communication was also sent to the three-judge panel investigating the cash haul allegations against Justice Varma. The probe is expected to start in the next one or two days.
The petition filed in the apex court questioning the jurisdiction of the three-member panel said, “The three-member committee constituted by the Collegium has no jurisdiction to conduct an investigation into the incident that occurred on March 14 at the official residence of Justice Yashwant Varma, where heaps of currency notes were by chance recovered in a fire constituting various cognisable offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The resolution of the Collegium investing the committee power to conduct such an investigation is rendered void ab initio inasmuch as the Collegium cannot confer jurisdiction upon itself to order so where the Parliament or the Constitution has conferred none,” Mr Nedumpara, who is a petitioner-in-person, argued.
The petition urged the apex court to invoke its powers on the judicial side to prohibit the committee from interfering with the sovereign policing function of the State to register and investigate a crime. Mr Nedumpara also asked the Supreme Court to re-look a Constitution Bench judgment of 1991 in the K. Veeraswami case, which had held that no criminal case should be registered against a High Court judge, Chief Justice of a High Court, or a Supreme Court judge without prior consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
“Equality before law and equal protection of law is the core of our Constitution. All are equal before law and the criminal laws apply equally to all, irrespective of one’s status, position, etc. The only exception, nay immunity, in our constitutional scheme is extended to the President and the Governors, the sovereign who represents ‘we the people.’ ‘Be ye never so high, the law is above you’,” the petition said.
It said the 1991 judgment fettered the police and amounted to creating a “special class of privileged men/women, immune from the penal laws of the land.” The petition said the common man had been left with several questions about the fire incident and alleged discovery of cash on March 14.
“Why was no FIR registered on March 14? Why were no arrests made? Why was the money not seized? Why was no mahazar prepared? Why was the criminal law not put in motion? Justice Varma in his explanation has stated that it is not his money, that he never kept any money, he is fully taken aback by it. Then why did he not report to the police and seek the registration of an FIR of an attempt to falsely implicate him,” Mr Nedumpara asked in his petition.
The plea asked the court to direct the government to take steps to revive the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010, which had lapsed, in a bid to curb corruption in the judiciary.
However, the documents and visual materials released by the Supreme Court on the alleged recovery of currency notes from Justice Varma’s residence show the Police Commissioner got in touch with Delhi High Court Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya only at around 4.50 p.m. on March 15, 2025 when the fire had broken out at about 11.30 p.m. the previous night. On receiving the information, Chief Justice Upadhyaya immediately swung into action.
The Delhi Police Commissioner’s report to Chief Justice Upadhyaya said a security guard at the residence of Justice Varma saw “half-burnt articles” and debris being removed in the morning after the fire. A separate communication in Hindi said four to five sacks of half-burnt currency notes were found in the gutted room. A similar second communication quoted what the security guard allegedly witnessed.
But the published documents, which have redacted portions whose publication may impinge on confidentiality or fairness, do not inform about the identity of the person(s) who removed the articles from the room on March 15 morning. They do not reveal who had taken the videos and photographs showing the residues of what may be currency notes. They do not mention whether the police had immediately sealed the room, a measure which may have prevented access to it following the fire and the dousing operation.
Justice Varma, in his response, has said he had no knowledge of cash lying in that room. He and his wife had been in Bhopal at the time of the fire and returned only on March 15. He said his family members were neither shown nor handed over any “sacks of burnt currency.” He has strongly rejected “the insinuation, if made, that we removed currency. The alleged removal is not known to us. None of my staff removed any article, currency or cash in any form”.
Finally, the whereabouts of the remnants of the burnt currency notes and whether it was seized or not have not been mentioned in the Delhi Chief Justice’s published report. The report also does not mention if there was an investigation underway into what caused the fire or if CCTV footage was recovered.
The published records show different stands on whether the storeroom, located adjacent to the Central Reserve Police Force guard room, was “used to be kept locked”, as stated in the Police Commissioner’s report. Justice Varma has countered that the storeroom was “utilised generally by all and sundry” to store unused household articles as well as (Central Public Works Department) CPWD material. The room was disconnected from the main residence. “It was surely not a room in my house,” he said.
The Registrar-cum-Secretary attached to the Delhi Chief Justice, who visited the room along with Justice Varma on the night of March 15, in his report said the private secretary of the judge informed him that the room was not kept locked. In his concluding remarks recommending a deeper probe, Chief Justice Upadhyaya reported that his enquiry, prima facie, did not reveal possibility of entry or access to the room by any person other than those residing in the bungalow, the servants, the gardeners and CPWD personnel. This may lead to a presumption that the room was not accessible to a rank outsider.
The three-member probe committee of two High Court Chief Justices and a Karnataka High Court judge would take a deeper dive into the facts of the case. CJI Khanna had, on March 21, sought an ascertainment of details of security guards and personal security officers posted at Justice Varma’s residence in the past six months. The Delhi Chief Justice had forwarded the query to the police.
The CJI had also called for the call details and the Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR) of Justice Varma. The call details have been handed over to the CJI in a pen drive. All these details would be placed by the Supreme Court before the probe committee for its consideration.
The Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal when asked on the issue said the matter was currently with the Supreme Court, which has constituted a three-member committee to probe into it. Let the committee report come. Then we will talk about this…,” Mr Meghwal said.
Notably, sanitation workers have said they found burnt pieces of currency notes near the official residence Justice Varma. “We work in this circle. We collect garbage from the roads. We were cleaning here 4-5 days back and collecting garbage when we found some small pieces of burnt ₹500 note. We found it that day. Now, we have found 1-2 pieces…We do not know where a fire broke out,” Inderjeet, a sanitation worker, said.
