The controversy involving Justice Yashwant Varma refuses to die down as the Supreme Court asked three questions to the judge about the fire incident at his residence and the burnt currency notes.
The first question asked by the apex court was how Justice Varma accounted for the presence of such a huge amount of cash in a room at his residence. The second question was to tell the source of the cash found in the said room. And, the third important question was who was the person who took out the burnt notes from the room on the morning of 15th March 2025. The Supreme Court also directed Justice Yashwant Varma not to destroy his mobile phone or delete or modify any messages or data.
Responding to these questions, Justice Yashwant Varma said that he was not aware of any money or cash lying in the store room of the house. Justice Varma also claimed that neither he nor any member of his family had any knowledge about the cash. He also claimed that he and his family have nothing to do with the cash found in the said room, and no such cash was seen by my family members or employees on the night the fire broke out. Answering the second question, Justice Varma said that it is clearly evident from the answer to the first question that the answer to the second question, i.e. there is no question of clarifying the source of the cash.
Justice Yashwant Varma claimed that he was travelling in Madhya Pradesh with his wife when the incident took place and returned to Delhi on the evening of 15th March. On 17th March, he met Justice Upadhyaya at the Delhi High Court Guest House at 8:30 AM. When he was shown the photographs and video showing burnt currency, Justice Varma insisted that he had no knowledge of any cash in the storeroom.
In response to the third question, Varma said that he did not remove the cash in question found in the store room of his residence. “As I have mentioned in the above question, we were neither shown nor handed over the sacks of burnt notes. The limited debris that was tried to be saved from the fire inside the room is still present in a part of the residence. Writing further in response to the question, Justice Varma said that as I told you, my wife and I returned from Bhopal on the evening of 15 March 2025 by Indigo flight number 2303. Therefore, the question of its alleged removal is not known to us,” Justice Varma said.
Notably, the Supreme Court has formed a three-member committee to investigate the allegations against Justice Yashwant Varma who has been transferred to the Allahabad High Court after the controversy erupted.
While the videos of half-burnt cash at Justice Varma’s residence on 14th March 2025 brought the Delhi High Court judge under scanner, he was also named in an FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under the Prevention of Corruption Act and an ECIR filled by the Enforcement Directorate under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in an alleged fraud committed by Simbhaoli Sugars Ltd. against banks. Before his elevation as a judge to the Allahabad High Court in October 2013, Justice Varma was a non-executive director of the company. The company’s accounts were reported as a non-performing asset (NPA) in 2012. By 2015, the Sambhaoli Sugars case was declared a ‘suspected fraud’ case and was reported to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
