New Delhi:
The Supreme Court late Saturday made public the report, including three pictures and a video, into the alleged finding of a cash stash at the house of Justice Yashwant Varma, the sitting judge of the Delhi High Court.
The unprecedented move by the top court came after Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna constituted an in-house committee to conduct an inquiry and asked the Delhi High Court Chief Justice, DK Upadhyaya, not to assign any judicial work to Justice Varma, who is at the centre of a controversy after unaccounted cash was found at his bungalow in the city during a firefighting operation on the night of Holi, March 14.
The pictures and the video, which were part of the 25-page report uploaded on the Supreme Court website, show the semi-burnt cash that was allegedly discovered in the storeroom at Justice Varma’s bungalow.
They were shared by the Delhi Police Commissioner, Sanjay Arora, with Justice Upadhyaya.
Justice Yashwant Varma Refutes Cash Pile
Justice Yashwant Varma strongly refuted allegations that a huge pile of cash was found at his bungalow.
“I was totally shocked to see the contents of the video since that depicted something which was not found on site as I had seen it. It was this which prompted me to observe that this clearly appeared to be a conspiracy to frame and malign me,” Justice Varma said, referring to a video shared by the Delhi Police chief.
In a lengthy response to the Delhi High Court Chief Justice on the alleged recovery of cash, Justice Varma said a fire broke out in the storeroom situated near the staff quarters of his official residence in Delhi late on the night of March 14.
“This room was generally utilised by all and sundry to store articles such as unused furniture, bottles, crockery, mattresses, used carpets, old speakers, garden implements as well as CPWD (Central Public Works Department) material. This room is unlocked and accessible both from the official front gate as well as the backdoor of the staff quarters. It is disconnected from the main residence and is surely not a room in my house as has been portrayed,” he said.
Justice Varma said he and his wife were in Madhya Pradesh that day and only his daughter and aged mother were home. He said he returned to Delhi with his wife on March 15 on an IndiGo flight from Bhopal.
“When the fire broke out around midnight, the fire service was alerted by my daughter and my private secretary and whose calls would be duly recorded (sic). During the exercise to douse the fire, all staff and the members of my household were asked to move away from the scene of the incident in view of safety concerns. After the fire was doused and when they went back to the scene of the incident, they saw no cash or currency on site,” the judge said.
“I state unequivocally that no cash was ever placed in that storeroom either by me or any of my family members and strongly denounce the suggestion that the alleged cash belonged to us. The very idea or suggestion that this cash was kept or stored by us is totally preposterous. The suggestion that one would store cash in an open, freely accessible and commonly used storeroom near the staff quarters or in an outhouse verges on the incredible and incredulous,” he asserted.
The room, the judge said, is “completely dissociated” from his and his family’s living areas.
Justice Varma also said his family’s cash withdrawals are documented and “always through regular banking channels, the use of UPI applications and cards”.
He asserted that no one from his house ever reported seeing any currency in the burnt form in the room.
“In fact, this gets further corroborated from there being no cash or currency which we saw when the site was restored to us after the fire personnel and the police had left the scene quite apart from we being not apprised of any recovery or seizure which was made on the spot,” he said.
“That takes me to the video clip which has been shared with me. Assuming without admitting that the video was taken immediately at the time of the incident at the site, none of it appears to have been recovered or seized. The second aspect which I need to underscore is that none of the staff was shown any remnants of cash or currency that may have been present on site,” the judge wrote, adding that his staff have said there was no ‘removal’ of currency.
“The only thing which was cleared was debris and what they considered to be salvageable. That is still present in the house and can be seen kept apart in one part of the residence. What baffles me is the complete absence of any sacks of allegedly burnt currency which were ever recovered or seized. We categorically assert that neither my daughter, PS nor household staff were shown these so-called sacks of burnt currency. I stand by my consistent position that when they accessed the storeroom, there was no currency, burnt or otherwise, which could be seen,” he said.
