CJAR calls for FIR against ex-Judge Yashwant Varma in cash discovery row

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The parliamentary committee accused Justice Varma of having large unexplained sums of money, not preserving evidence and providing evasive explanations.

The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reform (CJAR) on Monday publicly demanded the registration of a First Information Report (FIR) in the case of retired Allahabad High Court judge Yashwant Varma. It was prompted by the tabling of the report of a parliamentary Inquiry Committee in the Lok Sabha which unambiguously established three serious accusations against him about wads of burnt and half-burnt ₹500 currency notes found in a storeroom at his official Delhi premises amid a fire.

The committee, chaired by Speaker Om Birla, had recommended that proceedings to be public from that point onwards. CJAR welcomed this step and said that the report constituted irreconcilable requirements for an exhaustive criminal enquiry which could not be substituted by any other restraint or administrative action.

In an 8-page statement to Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, the watchdog also noted that the resignation of Justice Varma became effective in April, which struck off the constitutional protection by invalidity of that decree in the 1991 Veeraswami decision. Since then, the police were not legally required to seek the sanction of the CJI before initiating any police action. As such, CJAR urged the CJI to reinforce this by directly instructing the Delhi Police to file an FIR so that anyone who later investigated the case could also dig into the illicit source of the money, ask general questions about possible tampering with the evidence and fetch all pertinent individuals for criminal judgement.

The issue is about a March 2025 blaze at 30 Tughlaq Crescent, in which the responding firemen saw piles of cash that were subsequently taken away without comprehensive documentation or police sealing. Justice Varma repeatedly denied any knowledge of the money and suggested there had been a conspiracy against him; the parliamentary committee, however, found him evasive and misdirected, and did not find any evidence that a third party had been involved. CJAR praised Parliament for not dropping its enquiry after Justice Varma’s resignation, thereby breaking a bad historical habit, and warned that the decision not to bring criminals to book at this juncture would be a severe blow to public confidence in the judiciary.

✍️Ujala

Scholar from University of Delhi, INDIA