While Delhi high court judge Justice Yashwant Varma is facing a probe over cash being allegedly recovered from his official residence, a video of cash found among burning debris near his house has triggered speculation.
A burnt currency note is seen among the debris in a video shared by ANI, with the sanitation workers claiming that the rubble contained ₹500 notes.
Inderjeet, a sanitation worker, told ANI,”We work in this circle. We collect garbage from the roads. We were cleaning here 4-5 days back and collecting garbage when we found some small pieces of burnt ₹500 notes. We found it that day. Now, we have found 1-2 pieces…We do not know where a fire broke out. All we do is collect garbage.”
Surender, another sanitation worker, said,”We work with these garbage vans, we collect garbage. It has been 4-5 days when we found burnt ₹500 notes. We found some pieces even now.”
Justice Varma rejects cash link
According to an ANI report, Justice Yashwant Varma addressed the issue to the Delhi high court’s Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, striving to defend his integrity against what he called unfounded allegations.
“For a judge, reputation and character are of utmost importance. Sadly, mine have been gravely tarnished and irreparably damaged by baseless claims built on unsubstantiated innuendos and the unfounded assumption that the cash reportedly discovered during the fire belonged to me,” he was quoted by ANI as saying.
“I categorically reject any suggestion that we removed currency from the storeroom. We were neither shown nor given any sacks of burnt currency. The limited debris recovered during the incident was confined to a particular section of the residence, and there was no evidence of any currency,” he added.
On Saturday night, the Supreme Court uploaded on its website an in-house inquiry report, including photos and videos, into the alleged discovery of a huge stash of cash at the residence of Justice Yashwant Varma.
As recommended in the 25-page report, Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna constituted an in-house committee to conduct an inquiry and asked Delhi High Court Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya not to assign any judicial work to Justice Varma, PTI reported.