On May 4, 2025, a three-member in-house inquiry committee appointed by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna submitted its report on allegations against Justice Yashwant Varma of the Allahabad High Court to the CJI. The committee consisted of Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court; Justice G.S. Sandhawalia, Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court; and Justice Anu Sivaraman, a judge of the Karnataka High Court. The report was prepared on May 3, 2025 and submitted to the CJI on May 4, 2025.
Justice Varma had been made the subject of allegations and subsequently of investigation starting from a fire which took place on March 14, 2025 in the store room of his official residence located at Tughlak Crescent in New Delhi. Allegedly, firefighters and police personnel discovered “four to five semi-burnt sacks” of Indian currency at the scene. Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna appointed the three-member committee on March 22, 2025. The Supreme Court directed the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court not to assign any judicial work to Justice Varma on March 28, 2025. On March 24, 2025, the Supreme Court Collegium had earlier recommended for Justice Varma to repatriate to his parent court, the Allahabad High Court.
Ultimately, the Delhi High Court restrained Justice Varma from performing judicial work and he took the oath as a Judge of the Allahabad High Court on April 18. Despite this, per the Supreme Court order, he is not assigned any judicial work.
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Delhi High Court Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya submitted a preliminary report to CJI Khanna dated on 20 March. According to the report, the storeroom was open and accessible to family members, servants, gardeners, and employees of the CPWD. Upon inspection of the storeroom, investigators did not find forced entry. On March 15 debris and partially burnt items were removed from the storeroom. The report urged a further investigation. CJI Khanna posed three fundamental questions to Justice Varma:
(1) how did the cash get in the storeroom;
(2) where did the cash come from; and
(3) who took the burnt cash from the storeroom on the morning of March 15?
The Supreme Court instructed Justice Varma to preserve all of his phone data and communications and all security records for the last six months.
Justice Varma has vehemently rejected the allegations, saying he, nor his family ever had any cash at all in the storeroom. Justice Varma described the allegations of cash found at his residence as a “deliberate plot” to set him up and malign his reputation, in his statement to Delhi High Court Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya. He argued that staff had access to the storeroom – and that no cash was seized – and contested the stories that cash was found at his residence.
It is still unknown what the report of the in-house committee contains. CJI Khanna, who will retire on May 13, 2025, could decide to talk to senior Supreme Court judges or the Supreme Court Collegium to decide how to proceed. The Supreme Court had uploaded reports, photographs, videos, other materials being shared in relation to the fire incident onto its own website previously. It remains to be seen whether CJI Khanna will make the report public.
