Varma went downstairs to protest: “Being asked to answer unanswerable questions”

New Delhi: Allahabad High Court judge Yashwant Varma may have submitted his resignation to the President Draupadi Murmu Friday, but he fell to the ground crying. In a letter written simultaneously to Supreme Court Justice Aravind Kumar, chairman of the Judges Commission of Inquiry, the controversial high court judge faulted the commission for its process of testing the veracity of allegations related to the huge amount of unaccounted burnt cash found at his official residence. Justice Varma questioned the committee’s decision to proceed without any solid evidence, saying such a process left him no choice but to withdraw as his further involvement would legitimize a process “that requires me to answer unanswerable questions – where does the money come from”. “In the meantime, I have written to His Excellency the President of India,” he said. Justice Varma’s failure was demonstrated when first responders – firefighters and police – recorded the fire incident at his residence in central Delhi on the night of March 14-15 last year and later uploaded it to the Supreme Court website. If their evidence before the committee was conclusive, it became even more poignant during cross-examination by Judge Varma’s lawyers as they vividly described the discovery of the cash and the behavior of those who were at the judge’s home that night. Justice Varma is considered to be very close to Justice DY Chandrachud, who will serve as CJI for a two-year term from November 2022 to November 2024. In March 2024, the SC bench headed by him quashed the CBI FIR and ECIR filed by the Enforcement Directorate against Justice Varma, a lawyer who was working as a non-executive director of Simbhaoli Sugar Ltd before being appointed as the HC judge. Suspected of bank loan fraud. One of his main complaints was that the commission shifted the burden of proving innocence to him based on evidence gathered by the then inquiry committee constituted by CJI Sanjiv Khanna. He said the investigative report cannot be used as evidence or as relevant in any future litigation. On August 7 last year, a bench of Supreme Court Justice Dipankar Datta and AG Masih dismissed his decision challenging the inquiry proceedings, inquiry report and the then CJI Khanna’s recommendation to initiate the removal motion. Justice Varma said the storeroom where the cash was allegedly found burned and the video was recorded has never been seized by the police. Furthermore, since the room was available to everyone, it was not the responsibility of the judge to keep track of who kept what in the vast premises of the official bungalow, which included the residential quarters for the domestic helpers. Justice Varma said he left it to posterity to judge “whether such a duty can be discharged or reasonably imposed on the occupants of such houses”. He said the accusations and insinuations against him lacked any basis or evidence. Judge Varma said there was no strong evidence to support the charges against him, during a period in which criminal trial laws were unknown. “The burden of proof was effectively reversed without any underlying evidence being presented.” Judge Varma said: “I am deeply disappointed that despite the serious nature of these proceedings, which could have resulted in the removal of a sitting High Court judge, the Commission did not intervene, despite the appalling manner in which the proceedings unfolded.”