When Parliament convenes for its monsoon session on July 21, one issue on which there ought to be wide consensus is the impeachment of former Delhi High Court judge Yashwant Varma.
Sacks of partially burnt Rs500 currency notes found in the storeroom of his official residence, 30, Tughlaq Crescent, New Delhi during an accidental fire -- captured on camera on the intervening night of March 14-15 -- threw up questions of judicial integrity. One of the videos has an audio referring to the burning currency as “Mahatma Gandhi me aag lag rahi hai.”
That the storeroom was cleaned up and the notes went missing the next morning, but some burnt fragments of the bank notes were later found on the Tughlaq Crescent lane by lay people added to the mystery.
Justice Varma, his family and personal staff flatly denied there was any currency note in the room. But by then the photos and videos had reached the then Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna. The CJI took the extraordinary decision of putting the visuals and Justice Varma’s denial in public domain.
However, when an in-house probe panel’s report indicted the judge, he recommended his impeachment but refrained from placing the report in public domain. The media got hold of the 64-page report which possibly built a watertight case against Justice Varma. Curiously, no first information report (FIR) has been filed against the crime yet. Also, no committee has been constituted to investigate the allegations against Justice Varma under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, which is mandatory.
At a recent meeting of a parliamentary committee on law and justice, several MPs asked why no FIR has been lodged over the matter. While the government is trying to build parliamentary consensus for impeachment, the Opposition is yet to take a final call.
There are divergent views on whether another probe panel under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 needs to be constituted. While one section considers the in-house panel’s report as just a fact-finding exercise, others see it differently. The bigger question is the source of the ill-gotten wealth, which the panel did not answer. The matter will not get quietus unless the source of the funds is outed.
Black letter day
The drama began around 11.35 pm on March 14 when the accidental fire led to a lot of smoke, and aftersmoke. Justice Yashwant Varma was away on vacation with his family at the time of the fire. A call from the judge’s private secretary Rajinder Singh Karki to the fire department and Delhi Police led to the fire being controlled in a few hours.
Justice Varma returned in the evening the next day and denied that the cash belonged to him in his email to the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, who in turn apprised CJI Khanna.
The CJI on March 22 constituted a three-member probe panel comprising Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court GS Sandhawalia and Karnataka High Court Judge Anu Sivaraman.
The panel’s final report held Justice Varma squarely guilty of “misconduct”, after observing that he and his family were in complete control of the storeroom where the burnt cash was found. The committee, while trashing Justice Varma’s “conspiracy theory”, recommended his impeachment under Article 124(5) and Article 217 of the Constitution.
Sequence of events
Fire personnel and Delhi Police officials reached the spot after a call from Karki. While dousing it, police and fire personnel found Rs 500 notes burning and shot photos and videos of the storeroom. Delhi Police Commissioner Sanjay Arora shared the videos with Delhi High Court Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhaya on March 15 along with a report. A copy of the report was also sent to Union home minister Amit Shah.
Justice Varma cut short his vacation and returned to Delhi on March 15. He met Justice Upadhyaya two days later and informed him that some “furniture and articles had got burnt in the fire and that the storeroom is accessible to all the house staff.”
It was here that the CJ Upadhyaya showed him videographic evidence of half-burnt cash, following which Justice Varma alleged there was a conspiracy against him. The CJ apprised the CJI on March 21 that the matter warrants a deeper probe.
Three questions
The CJI on March 21 sought answers from Justice Varma to three questions:
How does he account for the presence of money/cash in the storeroom?
Explain the source of the money/cash.
Who is the person who removed the money/cash from the room in the morning of March 15?
Justice Varma was also told by the CJI not to dispose of his phone(s) or tamper with call record/messages data, and to furnish the details of all security staff working at his bungalow.
Justice Varma’s response
Justice Varma in his response to the HC chief justice Upadhyaya said the storeroom was used by all and sundry and that “it was disconnected from the main residence and was not a room in his house.” He also said he was away at the time of the fire; only his daughter and aged mother were at the house on March 14.
He contended that the staff were asked to move away from the house at the time of the incident due to safety concerns and when the fire was doused, they went back to the house but saw no cash in the storeroom. He further claimed that there was no cash placed by him or any of his family members in the storeroom.
The judge added that he readily agreed to a request from his principal secretary to visit the site (storeroom) after the fire personnel left and that the private secretary apprised him that there was no cash or half-burnt cash at the site.
Justice Verma further questioned the veracity of the videos shot by fire services personnel showing half-burnt cash, saying it could not be verified by him and that none of his staff or family members were shown any remnants of burnt cash or currency at the site. He went on to allege that the whole episode was a set-up and an affront to his reputation built over a long period.
Expert panel and eye-witnesses
The in-house panel constituted by the Supreme Court held its meetings at the Haryana State Guest House in Delhi’s Chanakyapuri on March 25, 26, 27, 28, April 2, 3, 4, 7 in physical mode, during which statements of 55 witnesses, including Justice Varma, were recorded.
The panel framed for itself three key issues it sought to find answers to, in consonance with the CJI’s three questions.
How does Justice Varma account for the presence of money in the storeroom at his official residence?
What is the source of the money/cash found?
Who is the person who removed the burnt money/cash in the intervening night of March 14-15?
During the course of its inquiry, 10 eyewitnesses stated before the panel that they had seen cash in the storeroom.
Manoj Mehlawat, station officer, Delhi Fire Services, said, “The notes at the site of the fire were of Rs 500 denomination and were singed by fire...I did take two photographs of the storeroom.” It was Mehlawat who had quipped, “Mahatma Gandhi me aag lag rahi hai.”
Suman Kumar, assistant divisional officer, Delhi Fire Services, in his deposition said, “I was told (by Manoj Mehlawat) that the currency notes had caught fire...I informed my divisional officer (Rajinder Atwal) that there were currency notes of Rs 500 denomination which had got affected in the fire... the notes were smouldering and were in a heap... I got in touch with Rajinder Singh who was present at the site. The verification was made by him but he said the fire was in stationery and domestic items only. The incident was witnessed by all present at the site.”
Rajesh Kumar, head constable, Tughlaq Road PS, told the panel, “I saw with my own eyes burnt currency of Rs 500 denomination spread all over the floor in the storeroom.” Similarly, Umesh Malik, SHO, Tughlaq Road PS, deposed that he saw the Rs 500 half-burnt notes.
“The stack of half-burnt currency notes was about 1 1/2 feet high. I directed my subordinate head constable Roop Chand to take photographs and video of inside the storeroom,” Malik told the panel, while admitting that he was asked by Karki to leave after the fire had been extinguished.
Findings of the panel
After questioning the witnesses, the in-house committee said, “(Some) eyewitnesses stated they had seen half burnt piles of cash inside the store room within 30 Tughlaq Crescent in occupancy of Justice Varma.”
On electronic evidence, the panel said the “video made by witness No. 17 Roop Chand of Delhi Police... has not been disputed ever by Justice Varma.”
The panel further said that at the end of one of the videos from the crime scene, there is an audio reference to a person calling ‘Rahil’, the house staff employee of the judge. Karki had admitted that the voice was his.
“It is apparent that both Karki and Rahil were present in front of the storeroom when the currency was on fire, and that their explanation that they were kept away from the storeroom by fire department officials cannot be accepted.”
Presence of private secretary
The panel said it believes Karki’s presence at the fire site in the intervening night of March 14-15 establishes his presence at the judge’s house that night, a fact he had disputed. Karki’s presence is also evident from call records between him and Justice Varma, who had asked him to stay back at the residence. However, the panel found that no instructions were given to Karki to leave in the morning.
Karki also denied that he had instructed the fire personnel against mentioning the burnt cash in their report. The panel said Karki has a lot to explain with regard to his secret meeting with Sandeep Kumar Sharma, deputy registrar, Delhi HC, on March 15 in the evening in RK Puram. Karki admitted that he met Sharma “for tea” the next evening.
Mysterious storeroom
The panel concluded that “the storeroom is a part of the premises of the official residence and that access to it may be available to occupants of 30 Tughlaq Crescent, but that the overall control and permission to have access to the store room was undeniably with Justice Varma or his family members.” The half-burnt currency notes seen and found during the process of dousing the fire are highly suspicious items and also are not of small denomination which could not have been placed in the store room without the tacit or active consent of Justice Varma or his family members.
Unnatural conduct
The panel said it found it difficult to accept Justice Varma’s contention that he did not take stock of the storeroom once he landed in Delhi at 5 pm on March 15. He contended in his submission before the panel that he only deemed it fit to speak to his mother, daughter and servants about the cash row and then left for his camp office, without visiting the storeroom.
“The explanation given by Varma as to why he did not inspect the storeroom on his arrival as he was concerned about the well-being of his family and that he had been told that everything in the storeroom had been destroyed and hence he did not deem it appropriate to visit the storeroom. A natural reaction of any person on arrival would be first to assess the damage. This conduct on Varma’s part is unnatural.”
Conclusive remarks and recommendations
On the three issues the panel framed for itself to answer, it concluded:
Whether burnt currency was found in the store room at 30 Tughlak Crescent: Yes.
Whether the store house was inside the premises of the judge’s residence: Yes.
How Justice Varma accounts for the presence of money/cash in the store room: He could not.
In the end, the time stamp on the videographic evidence of the burning cash was authenticated by the forensic department. “As such the objection of Justice Varma that he has been put to a disadvantage by having to disprove that the burnt notes were not found in the storeroom needs to be rejected at the very outset,” the panel said.
“The second question as to whether the storehouse lies in the bungalow of Justice Varma or not also stands established when this panel found that the tacit or active control of the storeroom was with the judge and his family members, and was well-monitored by security personnel as submitted by them,” the panel said.
“The third issue is how the judge accounts for presence of the cash in the storeroom. Since it has been proved that cash was found in the storeroom, the burden shifts on Justice Varma to give a plausible explanation for it, which he failed to do,” the panel said.
On the question that some persons removed the burnt wads of cash from the storeroom, the panel “is compelled to hold by way of strong inferential evidence that Rahil/Hanuman Parshad Sharma and Rajinder Karki -- members of members of the judge’s personal staff -- were instrumental in removing the cash in the wee hours of March 15 after Delhi Police and fire personnel had left.”
The panel found the judge guilty of misconduct and called for his sacking.
