Justice Yashwant Varma: A Judge in an Impossible Bind

Justice Yashwant Varma’s withdrawal from the parliamentary inquiry on 9 April 2026 and his resignation marks genuine institutional distress. The letter he addressed to the Judges Inquiry Committee carries the weight of a sitting High Court judge confronting a labyrinth from which no exit existed that was consistent with both personal dignity and institutional integrity.He could have resigned immediately after the fire. Here lies the tragedy that Shakespeare captured in Macbeth, when the weary king observes of his queen: “she should have died hereafter.” The event arrived at precisely the wrong moment. Varma was thousands of miles away in a remote forest with minimal connectivity. The fire was already extinguished before he learned of it. The cash had already been discovered and recorded by officials answerable only to themselves.By the time he returned that evening, the narrative had crystallised. His absence, which should have exonerated him, instead became circumstantial evidence of something darker.Judiciary on Trial: Justice Varma, Impeachment, and Modi Govt’s Power PlayHe could have fallen on his sword and spared the system embarrassment. But the fact that he chose to fight, and having done so found no avenue toward vindication, reveals fractures in the very mechanisms through which the Indian judiciary seeks to hold itself accountable.Varma was, by all available evidence, an accomplished judge. Thirteen years on the bench without a whisper of corruption or impropriety. No allegations of judicial bias. His departure is a genuine loss to the institution. Yet his achievements proved insufficient when measured against a fire, burnt currency, and video footage of an incident he did not witness and could not control.A judge facing an inquiry that could strip him of constitutional office is not entitled to mere stout denial. He cannot rely solely on implausibility or absence of motive. These matter profoundly but do not constitute exoneration in a proceeding of this magnitude.What a judge is entitled to is due process. This means clarity about the case against him, the right to cross-examine witnesses, access to all material evidence, and a procedure animated by the pursuit of truth. Most fundamentally, a system that does not reverse the burden of proof.On these procedural grounds, Varma’s letter proves devastating. The in-house committee conducted its inquiry without permitting him presence or cross-examination. Of the 54 witnesses examined before the IHC, just 31 were cited in the formal charge. Of those 31, only 9 were ultimately examined. Twenty-two witnesses were dropped without explanation, strikingly so after cross-examination exposed weaknesses.The statutory fire report, which showed officers present until 1:56 am and contained no mention of cash, was excluded without justification. Officers who decided not to record the cash were dropped immediately after their depositions revealed this fact. The CCTV system was never produced. The DVR underwent no forensic examination. The three personal security officers, whose affidavits contained false claims, were dropped after Varma sought their location data.This is not the machinery of a fair inquiry. It is the machinery of a directed one.Yet, the deepest problem is not procedural. It is logical. What narrative of exoneration was genuinely available to him? He denied knowledge of the cash, consistently and repeatedly. No evidence emerged to contradict this. But denial is not evidence. In a proceeding designed to determine guilt, mere denial, however true and however supported by circumstance, does not suffice.Justice Yadav vs Justice Varma: When Politics Decides Who's Saved and Who's NotThe only narrative that could have exonerated him would have been one of external mischief. An adversary, having identified the premises as vulnerable, might have placed the cash in the storeroom and set the fire to implicate him. This story fits all the facts: the vulnerability of the storeroom, unlocked and accessible from an unguarded back gate; the timing of the fire while he was demonstrably absent and unreachable; the selective handling of evidence after his return.But Varma was not willing to embrace this narrative. It is a terrible accusation to level against one’s own government, against peers within the system. It suggests a conspiracy at the heart of one’s own institution. No sitting judge wishes to make such a claim without incontrovertible evidence.The alternatives collapse into impossibility. One might suggest that a friend or relative had used the storeroom without his knowledge. But this invokes negligence of a higher order. It would require that a High Court judge did not know what lay in the various rooms of his own home. It converts judicial accountability into strict liability for anything found anywhere on one’s premises. And so Varma withdrew and resigned, not in capitulation, but in recognition that the proceeding itself had become the punishment.Yet, his departure resolves nothing for the nation. The fire still occurred. The currency was still discovered. Its source remains utterly mysterious. Thirteen crores in burnt notes must come from somewhere. The explanation matters because it implicates the integrity of the processes through which the discovery was handled, recorded, and then excluded from the formal record. The nation still requires investigation. Not into Varma’s conduct, but into the source of the money and the actual chain of events. Not into his character, which 13 years of unblemished service have already established, but into the integrity of the institution that handled the discovery with so many contradictions and equivocations.A Scandal in the Capital: The Missing Links in Justice Yashwant Varma's Cash RowThree judges have now resigned while facing parliamentary removal. Justice PD Dinakaran resigned on 29 July 2011, a day before an inquiry committee’s first sitting. Justice Soumitra Sen resigned on 1 September 2011, five days before the Lok Sabha was scheduled to vote on his removal, after the Rajya Sabha condemned him 189 to 17. Now Justice Varma has resigned as the parliamentary committee approaches completion. Each resignation activated the same constitutional gap. The Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 contains no provision requiring inquiry to continue after a judge vacates office. Resignation becomes the rational choice for any judge facing likely removal. Under the High Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Act, 1954, pension accrues on retirement, which includes resignation. Removal by parliamentary address does not constitute retirement and therefore does not carry the same benefits. This distinction makes resignation financially attractive and immediately costless.Professor Mohan Gopal, a member of the Dinakaran committee, argued that the inquiry mandate survived resignation because Parliament’s inquiry power differs from its removal power. A formal finding of fact serves a purpose independent of removal. It places accountability in the public record. This argument possesses considerable force and intellectual merit, yet it has not prevailed in 15 years.Yet, countervailing considerations deserve attention. The inquiry committees are designed as instruments to determine whether a judge should be removed from office.Once removal becomes impossible, the inquiry’s animating function disappears. To continue transforms it into something else: a truth commission operating without the judge’s participation, without the possibility of his vindication, and without any legal consequence.Moreover, the judge who resigns deserves recognition for his choice. Varma’s withdrawal reflects a judgment about the integrity of the process itself. There is something to be said for a system that permits a judge to refuse to participate in what he believes to be a compromised process.The resignation does open pathways to different forms of investigation. It clears the decks and allows inquiry to proceed into the source of the money without the shadow of personal interest. Such investigation, freed from the adversarial structure of the parliamentary proceeding, might produce something closer to truth than any committee process could achieve.We have reached the end of Varma’s career on the bench. We have not reached the end of his story. History will record the unfairness with which he was treated. But history will also demand an answer to the question his withdrawal leaves suspended: where did the money come from, and why was the truth about its handling obscured?That question now belongs to India.(Sanjay Hegde is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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Justice Yashwant Varma’s Exit and a System Under Strain

A judge is entitled to due process and a system that does not reverse the burden of proof, writes Sanjay Hegde.

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