New Delhi: The Supreme Court has constituted a three-member committee to conduct an inquiry into allegations against Justice Yashwant Varma, a sitting judge of the Delhi High Court. The Supreme Court has also asked the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court not to assign any judicial work to Justice Varma for the time being.
The report submitted by the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court to the Supreme Court are being uploaded on the Supreme Court website, it has been mentioned in a press release from the Supreme Court.
The committee set up by the Supreme Court comprises Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the High Court of Punjab & Haryana, Justice G S Sandhawalia, Chief Justice of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh and Justice Anu Sivaraman from the High Court of Karnataka.
A fire broke out at Justice Varma’s residence on Friday. After firefighting began, allegations started doing the rounds that there was cash to the tune of Rs 15 crore in the house. Though there was no confirmation of this, there was outrage, both within the legal circle and among common citizens.
To make matters worse, the Supreme Court took a decision on Friday to transfer Justice Varma to the Allahabad High Court, his parent court. This decision came under fire from the Allahabad High Court Bar Association. The Supreme Court responded by saying that the matter was just being deliberated and has nothing to do with Friday’s incident.
Though nothing concrete has come out as yet, people have started probing into Justice Varma’s past. It has now come to be known that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in 2018, had named him as an accused in the Rs 97.85 crore Simbhaoli Sugar Mill loan misappropriation case. He was then a lawyer and a non-executive director of the company. Though the CBI launched a probe, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court to resume the investigation in 2024.