New Delhi, April 10: Calling himself a victim of a vilification campaign, Allahabad High Court judge Yashwant Varma has withdrawn from an inquiry being conducted by a Lok Sabha-appointed panel for his impeachment, saying his continued participation would legitimise an earlier inquiry, where he was asked to “answer the unanswerable” question on the source of money found from his Delhi residence.
Embattled judge Varma, who has been facing the heat after wads of burnt currency notes were found from his residence here last year, submitted his resignation to President Droupadi Murmu on April 9, rendering the impeachment proceedings against him infructuous.
The purported discovery of a huge stash of cash took place after a fire broke out at the Lutyens’ Delhi residence of Justice Varma, then a Delhi High Court judge, at around 11:35 pm on the night of Holi on March 14, 2025, prompting fire-department personnel to rush to the spot and douse the flames.
In a separate letter, addressed to the judges of the Inquiry Committee appointed by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Justice Varma has expressed his “anguish” and listed out the reasons for withdrawing himself from the ongoing inquiry, a condition precedent before the initiation of an impeachment motion in Parliament.
“I have been subjected to a vilification campaign for over a year based on unfounded allegations which would have never met even bare threshold known in law on the basis of which a court would have deemed it appropriate to take cognisance in ordinary circumstances,” Justice Varma (57) has said in the letter.
In the 13-page letter, he has said in his over-13-year career as a high court judge, he was not once alleged to have indulged in corruption or judicial impropriety.
The judge has further alleged that 27 of the 54 witnesses, who did not speak against him, were dropped from the apex court’s in-house inquiry committee proceedings “without any explanation”, and “no charge was ever made, and no evidence whatsoever was led to show that any cash was placed in the storeroom by me or at my instance, or even with my knowledge or consent”.
He has contended that the charge against him rested entirely upon impermissible presumptions and should never have been put to him.
Reiterating his defence, Justice Varma has said he was physically absent when the alleged incident took place at his residence and was on a planned vacation, and that the alleged facts of the offence “defy ordinary logic and common sense to suggest that I would have chosen such a location to store ‘cash'”.
The judge has strongly rebutted the proceedings undertaken by the two committees and claimed that they too “rest on the bare and undisputed facts that a storeroom existed within the allotted premises and that cash was allegedly found there”.
“If that alone is considered sufficient for a finding of misbehaviour, the entire exercise leading evidence was unnecessary. The burden of proof has been effectively reversed without any foundational case being made out,” he has said in the letter.
Justice Varna has said it was impossible for him to reconcile with the state of affairs that lack “fairness or due process”.
“In these circumstances, I would be doing myself and the institution the greatest disservice by continuing to participate in the present proceedings, thereby legitimising a process that calls upon me to answer the unanswerable — where did the money come from,” he has said.
In his letter, Justice Varma has said he was profoundly disappointed that despite the solemn nature of these proceedings, which carry the potential consequence of removing a high court judge from his constitutional office, the committee did not intervene despite the shocking manner in which the proceedings unfolded. (PTI)
