New Delhi: In his written explanation to the Chief Justice of The High Court of Delhi, Justice Yashwant Varma has stated that the visuals of piles of burnt cash at his residence appears to be a ‘conspiracy’ to ‘malign’ him. On Thursday, a fire broke out at Justice Varma’s official residence in New Delhi.
Even as firefighting operations were on, videos of piles of burning cash got circulated on social media. It was alleged that the judge of the High Court of Delhi had Rs 15 crore in cash in a room next to his chamber. On Saturday, the Supreme Court constituted a three-member committee to probe the matter and asked the Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi not to assign any judicial matter to Justice Varma for the time being.
“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 wrote in his letter.
The senior judge went on to state that the incident lends credence to his “firm belief that the entire incident is part of a sequence of events which occurred in the recent past including the unfounded allegations that circulated on social media in December 2024”.
“I unequivocally state that neither I nor any of my family members had stored or kept any cash or currency in that storeroom at any point of time. Our cash withdrawals, made from time to time, are all documented and always through regular banking channels, the use of UPI applications and cards. Insofar as the allegation of the recovery of cash, I once again make it clear that no one from my house ever reported seeing any currency in burnt form in the room,” said Justice Varma.
According to him, the room where the fire broke out, 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 material.
It was “unlocked and accessible both from the official front gate as well as the backdoor of the staff quarters” and “is disconnected from the main residence and is surely not a room in his house”, he has written.
He claimed that during the firefighting, all staff and members of the household were asked to move away for their safety. When they returned, after the blaze was doused, they saw no cash.
“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 ……. I only wish that the media had conducted some enquiry before I came to be indicted and defamed in the press,” he has stated.
“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,” he wrote.
“In the life of a judge, nothing matters more than reputation and character. That has been severely tarnished and irreparably damaged. This incident has scarred my reputation built over more than a decade as a Judge of a High Court, and it has left me with no means to defend myself. I would also beseech you to bear in consideration that in all my years as a Judge of a High Court, no such allegation had ever been made in the past nor any doubt cast on my integrity,” he added.