NEW DELHI: Ahead of a possible removal motion in Parliament during Monsoon session, Justice Yashwant Varma has moved the Supreme Court challenging the legality of the process adopted by the CJI-appointed three-member inquiry panel which found him guilty of possessing huge amount of unaccounted cash at his official residence when he was a judge of Delhi HC.Citing his unblemished career as a constitutional court judge for 11 years, Justice Varma in his writ petition told the SC that the procedure adopted by the inquiry committee, comprising Punjab and Haryana chief justice Sheel Nagu, Himachal Pradesh CJ G S Sandhawalia and Karnataka HC’s Anu Sivaraman, was faulty as he was not given adequate opportunity to defend himself.

The Committee in its report to then CJI Sanjiv Khanna had said, it “has no hesitation in holding that in the backdrop of direct as well as electronic evidence of unimpeachable character, further corroborated by the evidence of the experts, the issue of presence of cash in the storeroom situated within 30, Tughlaq Crescent, New Delhi, is established.” CJI Khanna had suggested to Justice Varma to resign. When he declined, the CJi had sent the report to the govt with a recommendation to initiate a motion in Parliament for the judge’s removal. Govt is likely to move a motion in Parliament for removal of Justice Varma during the coming Monsoon Session.

Justice Varma said the report was part of an in-house inquiry committee, an internal procedure, and the CJI had no authority or reason to forward it to the govt. He said that the non-seizure of cash discovered by first responders on the night of March 14 and the alleged removal of the cash by some persons gives no credence to the finding that the cash was found at a storehouse of his residence.The inquiry report said, Union home minister Amit Shah was the first to be informed by the Delhi Police Commissioner about “four to five sacks of half-burnt cash” at Justice Varma’s official residence within hours of its accidental discovery due to a fire on March 14 night at the bungalow storeroom.The firefighters and police reached the official residence a little after 11.30 pm on March 14, the videos of half-burnt currency notes of Rs 500 denomination were shot by the first responders around midnight of March 14-15 and they left Justice Yashwant Varma’s residence after dousing the fire around 1 am on March 15.Police commissioner Sanjay Arora first informed the Union home minister on March 15 and later in the afternoon briefed Delhi HC chief justice D K Upadhyay about the unaccounted cash at Justice Varma’s residence. Arora also shared “certain still photographs and video” of the storeroom fire with the Delhi HC CJI, who in turn informed the incident to then CJI Sanjiv Khanna.The inquiry panel in its report said, “The information was shared by Arora with Justice D K Upadhyay in the late afternoon of March 15, who was out of station at Lucknow, on account of Holi vacation and he was informed that a report had been sent to the Union home minister, wherein there was reference that there were four or five half-burnt sacks of Indian currency at the spot.”