SC repatriates Justice Varma to Allahabad High Court

Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna had called the meeting of the Collegium on March 20 after an adverse report on the cash discovery and a video purportedly showing firefighters stumbling on the bundles while putting out the blaze in a store room attached to the residence.

The Collegium unanimously decided to recommend his transfer after it was appraised of the video, but its resolution was not uploaded immediately.

As the controversy deepened, the SC, in a March 21 press note, said that “the proposal for transfer of Justice Yashwant Varma, who is the second senior most Judge in the Delhi High Court and a member of the Collegium, to his parent High Court, that is, the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, where he will be ninth in seniority, is independent and separate from the In-house enquiry procedure”.

Justice Varma maintains no cash was shown to the staff at his residence. “When the fire broke out around midnight, the fire service was alerted by my daughter and my private secretary, whose calls would be duly recorded. 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,” he said in a response to Delhi High Court Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya.