Five crucial questions the report indicting Justice Varma does not answer

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5 days ago

A three-member committee constituted by the previous Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna to investigate allegations against Justice Yashwant Varma has concluded that there is 'sufficient substance' in the charges.
On March 14, half-burnt wads of cash were allegedly recovered at a storeroom in Justice Yashwant Varma's official residence in Delhi when emergency services responded to a fire at his home.
No police complaint has been filed thus far in the case, in spite of a petition in the Supreme Court requesting the same.
On March 22, the Supreme Court constituted a committee, comprising Chief Justice Sheel Nagu of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chief Justice GS Sandhawalia of the Himachal Pradesh High Court and Justice Anu Sivaraman of the Karnataka High Court, to investigate the incident.
The committee in its report, dated May 3, held that Varma's misconduct was 'serious enough to call for initiation of proceedings for removal'.
Last week, the report was published by The Leaflet and Bar and Bench. It held that Varma betrayed public trust by allowing 'highly suspicious material in shape of piles of currency notes to be stashed in the store room' of his official bungalow in Delhi when he was a judge at the Delhi High Court.
Varma, who was not in Delhi when the fire broke out, has alleged that the entire incident was a conspiracy to frame him. He claims that the storeroom was not part of the main residence and accessible by his staff. He added that on March 14, his family members and staff had not found any cash at the storeroom after the fire was doused.
The committee, on the other hand, cited eyewitness testimony and electronic evidence to conclude that not only was half-burnt cash found at the site after the fire, but it was removed by Varma's staff. It also inferred from testimonies and circumstantial evidence that Varma and his family had 'covert or active control' over the storeroom.
The committee's recommendation to initiate proceedings for Varma's removal sets the stage for a potential impeachment motion in Parliament, the only constitutional route to remove a High Court judge.
However, a close reading of the report reveals that the most fundamental questions about the alleged cash remain unanswered.
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1 Where did the money come from?
This is the central mystery that remains unsolved. The committee's report establishes, through the testimony of at least 10 eyewitnesses from the Delhi Police and Fire Services, that piles of half-burnt Rs 500 currency notes were visible in the storeroom after the fire was brought under control.
But after establishing its presence, the report does not identify its source – even though that was one of the three questions the committee had set out to answer.
The committee noted that since the cash was found on premises under his 'covert or active control', it was for Varma to account for its source. When Varma offered a 'flat denial and rais[ed] a bald plea of conspiracy', the committee found his explanation wanting.
Essentially, the inquiry concluded that since Varma could not prove the money was not his or explain a conspiracy, he must be held accountable for it.
The report explained: 'Where presence of burnt cash in the store room is established, it is for Justice Varma to account for the same by either successfully raising a defence of planting of cash in the store room which he failed to do or proving the defence of conspiracy theory by adducing evidence/material that the money/cash did not belong to him but to someone else by disclosing the identity of the real owner of cash. Not having done so, Justice Varma cannot be helped…'
2 Where is the money now? And why was it not counted?
The committee noted that despite the discovery of what eyewitnesses called a 'large pile of cash', no official seizure memo was prepared and no panchnama was drawn up at the scene by the police.
The committee described the official handling of the scene as 'slipshod'.
But it did not hold the police officials accountable for this because its ambit, it said, 'is not to find fault with the action or inaction of the fire personnel or the police personnel'.
The committee added that 'quantification of the volume of the currency is of no consequence since it has come from the statements of the witnesses and from the video recordings that there was [a] reasonably large amount of volume of currency in the store room.'
Because the cash was never seized or officially counted, its whereabouts are unknown.
The committee report relies on 'strong inferential evidence' to conclude that the cash was removed from the scene in the early hours of March 15 by Varma's 'most trusted personnel' – his private secretary Rajinder Singh Karki and his personal staff Hanuman Prashad Sharma and Mohammad Rahil. This conclusion is based on contradictions in their testimonies and their presence at the site from the time of the fire on the night of March 14 onwards.
However, this remains an inference. There is no direct evidence – no witness, no video – of anyone physically removing sacks of cash. The evidence at the heart of the case was never secured by the authorities, making its quantity and its fate a matter of speculation.
3 How did the fire start?
The report is silent about how the storeroom at Varma's residence caught fire on the night of March 14.
The report begins with the series of events that occur once the fire personnel discover half-burnt Rs 500 notes inside the storeroom.
But what happened an hour or two before the fire broke out?
The report notes Varma's claim that Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, had told him about an incident of 'arson' at his residence – meaning a deliberate attempt to set the room on fire.
The news of arson shocked Varma, says the committee report, because 'he was under the belief that it was merely a fire caused by short-circuit'.
The committee report added that Upadhyaya had been briefed about the fire by the Delhi Commissioner of Police Sanjay Arora over the phone on the afternoon of March 15.
Arora also told Upadhyaya that a report on the incident, which included information about the discovery of currency notes, had already been shared with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the report said.
In a separate report that Justice Upadhyaya prepared for the Chief Justice of India on March 21, he said that Arora had told him about 'an incident of fire that broke out' at the storeroom. The paragraphs following this portion were redacted when it was made public by the Supreme Court on March 22.
The committee examined the Delhi Police commissioner, but it does not state what exactly he told Upadhyaya about the cause of the fire in his briefing. Upadhyaya was not examined by the committee.
Manoj Mehlawat, a station officer with the Delhi Fire Services, told the committee that he was unsure about the short-circuit theory, which was Varma's initial assumption, according to the committee. 'I cannot tell for sure whether the fire occurred by short circuit, though there was no electric heater in the room,' said Mehlawat, quoted in the report.
Sumar Kumar, an assistant divisional officer at Delhi Fire Services, said that he did not look into the cause of the fire as his job was to douse it and prevent injuries. 'I was a little bewildered on seeing the incident and my senior officer had informed me that since high ups are involved, you should not further take any action,' Kumar told the committee.
In his defence, Varma later told the committee that there was an explosion in the storeroom 'which is not being examined by anyone'. The committee dismissed this by simply noting that Varma 'took no action' on it.
Essentially, since Varma did not approach the police alleging arson at his residence, it did not merit a deeper look.
So what exactly was the cause of the fire? The report has no answers.
4 What happened to the CCTV footage?
Closed-circuit television cameras installed at Varma's residence could have pointed to the cause of the fire, especially footage from one camera that was pointed at the door of the storeroom. But the committee did not rely on it because the camera's data had been lost – a glaring weakness in the probe.
This crucial fact is not stated directly in the report. It is mentioned when the report cites Varma's defence, which referred to a Central Forensic Science Laboratory report dated April 27, 2025, and said that the 'hard disc of the said cameras [at his residence] have been found not to be accessible' and that 'it was not his fault that the cameras were not working'.
'He has also questioned the manner in which the CCTV hardware was retrieved,' noted the committee. The report does not say who retrieved the footage.
However, the CCTV cameras were seized on the committee's instructions by the Registrar General of the Delhi High Court.
The committee did not explain if the footage was lost and why. 'There is nothing on record why the data was lost on account of the fact that the CCTV camera was sealed since the committee had called for the said hardware,' it said.
In short, the committee could not study the CCTV footage to probe the case. Varma too questioned whether the camera hardware had been 'properly sealed', because without the footage, 'his defence was lost'. The committee rejected this view because it believed that Varma had 10 days between the fire and the seizure of the cameras to 'preserve, analyse and scrutinise' the footage – something he apparently did not do.
5 Did the committee find anything on Varma's phone?
The committee's report confirmed that mobile phones belonging to Varma, his staff and officials at the scene were seized for forensic examination. The report meticulously analysed call data records, noting, for instance, a 230-second call between Varma and Karki at 1.23 am on the night of the fire. This is used to establish that Varma was in close communication with his staff.
But the report is silent on the content of any communication. There is no mention of any incriminating message, photo or data recovered from Varma's personal phone that would directly link him to the cash or a cover-up.