The Moment Justice Yashwant Varma Dropped Exit News To Inquiry Panel

Justice Yashwant Varma resigned as a judge of the Allahabad High Court while a parliamentary inquiry committee was already in session, informing the panel midway through its proceedings and after it had formally started hearings on the assumption that he was still contesting the charges. He had been under fire after the recovery of a huge stash of cash from his house in Delhi last year. He had then denied the cash belonged to him.

Members of the Judges Inquiry Committee were handed Justice Varma's resignation letter only after the committee had begun its sitting on Thursday morning. Until that point, the panel had received a 13-page communication from the judge that disclosed he had written separately to the President, but made no reference to a resignation.

On the basis of that letter alone, the committee proceeded with the scheduled hearing. It was only during the course of the meeting that Justice Varma's letter conveying his decision to step down was placed before the members.

By the afternoon, committee members were confronted with two parallel claims from the judge: a formal withdrawal from the inquiry on grounds of unfairness, and a resignation from office communicated directly to the President.

In his letter to the committee, dated April 9, Justice Varma said he was "recusing" himself from the proceedings because "a fair inquiry is not being conducted," adding that he was taking the decision "with deep anguish" and was "fully cognizant of the gravity" of withdrawing at this stage.

The letter does not indicate the resignation as an acceptance of the inquiry's authority or findings. The exit appears as a refusal to legitimise what Justice Varma described as a process "predicated upon conjectures, allegations and presumptions."

"I would be doing myself and the institution the greatest disservice by continuing to participate in the present proceedings," he wrote, arguing that the inquiry had reversed the burden of proof without first establishing a prima facie case of misconduct.

Justice Varma also questioned why the committee had started proceedings at all when, according to him, no independent inquiry had been conducted under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, and the committee was relying heavily on a preliminary In-House Committee (IHC) report that, he said, was never meant for public disclosure or evidentiary use.

The cash was found in a storeroom at Justice Varma's official house in Delhi after a fire in March 2025. In his letter, he said the storeroom was physically detached from the residential quarters, routinely accessed by staff and maintenance personnel, and neither locked nor controlled by him or his family.

He said he was out of the state at the time of the incident, that the keys to the storeroom were not with him, and that the CCTV cameras and CRPF security arrangements were not under his control.

"It is illogical to assume that I had kept 'cash' in the storeroom," he wrote.

Parts of the letter attacked the conduct of the inquiry itself, referring to the alleged removal of witnesses after their testimony weakened the prosecution's case, the exclusion of the statutory fire report which made no reference to cash, and the denial of any opportunity to cross-examine witnesses who appeared during the IHC process.

Justice Varma quoting witnesses said senior fire and police officials had taken a conscious decision not to record or seize cash on the night of the incident, long before he was ever informed of the fire. He alleged affidavits filed by his personal security officers contained false assertions, and that those officers were dropped as witnesses after he sought a GPS-based inquiry into their location.

By the time the resignation letter surfaced during Thursday's sitting, the committee had already crossed a procedural threshold - acting on the assumption that Justice Varma remained a contesting judge subject to removal proceedings. Justice Varma closed his letter by expressing the "hope that history will one day record the unfairness with which a sitting High Court Judge was treated."