The storm swirling around Justice Yashwant Varma of the Delhi High Court has now drawn the highest judicial scrutiny, with the Chief Justice of India constituting a three-member panel to investigate explosive allegations involving a massive stash of unaccounted cash—reportedly Rs 15 crore—discovered at a property linked to the judge.
Leading the probe are Justice Sheel Nagu (Chief Justice of Punjab & Haryana High Court), Justice G.S. Sandhawalia (Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court), and Justice Anu Sivaraman (Karnataka High Court). Meanwhile, a parallel directive has landed—Justice Varma will not be assigned any judicial work until further notice, per an order directed to Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya of the Delhi High Court.
But if the whispers of scandal were loud, Justice Varma’s rebuttal came in thunderclaps.
In a sharply worded letter responding to CJ Upadhyaya’s queries, Justice Varma dismissed the allegations as “preposterous,” denying any connection to the alleged cash. According to him, neither he nor his family ever stored anything of the sort in the location where the money was supposedly found—a storeroom near the staff quarters, far removed from the main residence and accessible to many.
Calling into question the very foundation of the claim, Justice Varma stated the storeroom was routinely used to stash discarded items—broken furniture, old carpets, garden tools, and CPWD materials. The judge contended that suggesting such a room would be the hiding place for crores in cash bordered on absurdity.
Varma’s narrative of the events paints a different picture from the one circulating in the media. He revealed that he and his wife were out of Delhi on the night of the fire—March 14–15—visiting Madhya Pradesh, leaving only his daughter and elderly mother at home. The fire, he said, was believed to have been a short circuit, until CJ Upadhyaya later referred to it as an incident of “arson”—a term that, according to Varma, came as a surprise.
He added that after the fire, a senior staffer from the High Court (PPS) was allowed to inspect the room, along with his own personal staff. No cash was discovered at the site, he emphasized, a claim allegedly supported by the report he later received.
But what’s truly rattled the judge appears to be the alleged mismatch between his observations and what was presented to CJ Upadhyaya by the police—a set of photographs and videos that Varma says depict a scene starkly different from what he witnessed on-site.
“This clearly appears to be a conspiracy to frame and malign me,” Justice Varma asserted in his letter, drawing a straight line between this incident and what he described as a broader, ongoing campaign against him—including anonymous social media attacks in late 2024.
In his account, the timeline of events, the absence of any visible cash during inspection, and the selective circulation of visual evidence all point to something more sinister than a case of unexplained currency. For now, the facts are shrouded in smoke—both literal and figurative—but with the top court now officially stepping in, the heat is only just beginning.