Justice Varma withdraws from the impeachment investigation with no evidence and only assumptions

In a letter to the parliamentary inquiry committee looking into the accusations, Justice Yashwant Varma, who resigned amid an impeachment process over the recovery of wads of currency notes from his residence, claimed that he has been the target of a “deliberate vilification campaign” even though there is no concrete evidence against him. Varma questioned the investigation’s fairness and legal foundation when he announced his resignation and withdrew from the current proceedings.

Varma, who was a Delhi High Court judge at the time of the occurrence in March 2025, reaffirmed in a thorough 13-page letter that he was out of station at the time of the recovery and that it is illogical to think he would have chosen a storage to deposit cash. The judge said that the investigation was predicated more on conjecture, accusations, and assumptions than on hard proof and that he was not afforded a fair chance to defend himself.

The scandal started in March 2025 when Justice Varma’s official house in New Delhi caught fire. Police and firefighters found partially and completely burned Rs 500 banknotes, valued at around Rs 15 crore, concealed in a cupboard while fighting the fire. Justice Varma maintained that the storeroom was not under his control, though subsequent investigations suggested otherwise.

“The incident occurred when I was physically absent from the premises (on a pre-planned vacation) with extremely limited mobile connectivity in a remote forest area, it defies ordinary logic and common sense to suggest that I would have chosen such a location to store ‘cash’,” Justice Varma said in his letter.

“Despite the above, I suffered the public vilification in silence, remaining hopeful that those tasked by the law and the system to investigate and ascertain the facts would address the issue appropriately and fairly. Regrettably, the proceedings that have followed have been concerned almost exclusively with establishing the bare facts that a storeroom existed in the allotted premises and that cash was found there,” he added.

Varma maintained that no legally admissible proof had been produced to establish that any cash was found in the storeroom of his residence or that it belonged to him or his family.

The 57-year-old judicial officer further alleged that the parliamentary inquiry committee, constituted under the impeachment process, relied heavily on the findings of a prior in-house committee report, which he argued should never have been made public as it was meant solely for the Chief Justice of India. He criticised the enquiry panel for failing to undertake a fresh investigation under the Judges Inquiry Act, claiming instead that the proceedings were based on “suggestions, imputations and presumptions.”

“I state that the proceedings initiated against me, whether they be before the IHC or for that matter even the present enquiry, have all proceeded on unstated suggestions, insinuations and imputations requiring me to disprove assumed facts and innumerable presumptions. This has resulted not only in a reversal of the burden of proof as we commonly understand but also in placing upon me the onerous obligation of proving multiple negatives,” the strongly-worder letter said.

Justice Varma informed the panel that he was stepping away from the inquiry, stating that continued participation would “legitimise a process” that, according to him, was fundamentally flawed. He argued that the proceedings were asking him to answer “the unanswerable”, specifically, to explain the origin of money he claims he had no knowledge of.

“In these circumstances, I would be doing myself and the institution the greatest disservice by continuing to participate in the present proceedings, thereby legitimising a process that calls upon me to answer the unanswerable – where did the money come from. I therefore withdraw from these proceedings with immediate effect and have instructed my Advocates accordingly,” he said.Deeply dissatisfied with the way the Parliament-appointed panel conducted the investigation, the former High Court judge expressed hope that “history will mark the unfairness” with which a serving judge had been treated.

Following his resignation to President Droupadi Murmu, claiming “deep anguish,” Justice Varma wrote this letter. Since a sitting judge can only be removed through a parliamentary process, his resignation essentially nullifies the impeachment proceedings that were started against him.