A high court judge in the eye of a storm refuses to budge. Justice Yashwant Varma, recently repatriated to the Allahabad High Court from Delhi, has declined to resign even after a high-level judicial panel found damning evidence against him in a probe that began with flames and ended with burned currency notes.
The committee—comprising Chief Justices Sheel Nagu (Punjab and Haryana), GS Sandhawalia (Himachal), and Justice Anu Sivaraman (Karnataka)—was formed after an unusual incident rocked the judicial corridors: a fire at Varma’s Delhi residence on March 14 led firefighters to discover bundles of cash charred amidst the smoke. A video, later shared with Delhi’s top cop and then the Supreme Court, revealed the crisp edges of currency burning in the blaze.
Justice Varma and his wife weren’t even in the city at the time. In their absence, only his elderly mother and daughter were home. The judge later called the entire affair a setup, branding it a conspiracy against him. But the in-house probe, launched on March 22, didn’t seem to agree.
By May 4, the committee submitted its report to Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, who reportedly gave Varma a choice: resign voluntarily or face the constitutional hammer of impeachment. Varma chose defiance.
Now, the Chief Justice has escalated the matter, forwarding both the report and Varma’s response to the President and the Prime Minister. The judiciary has done its part—what comes next rests with the executive and Parliament. The stage is set for what could become a rare and explosive impeachment proceeding against a sitting judge.
While the courtroom doors remain shut for now—judicial work has been taken away from Varma—the protests have spilled out. The Allahabad High Court Bar Association went on strike to voice their objection to his return. The Supreme Court itself, taking an unusual step, declined to order an FIR against him, citing the ongoing internal investigation.
And even as the legal machinery grinds forward, Varma has quietly sought counsel from senior legal minds, signaling that he’s ready to fight this out to the bitter end.
Scandal, silence, and standoff—the script of Justice Yashwant Varma’s story is still being written, and its final chapter may yet unfold under the dome of Parliament.
