ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 19, WE, AT THE LEAFLET, took the decision of publishing the coveted 64 page report of the in-house inquiry committee formulated by former chief justice Sanjiv Khanna to investigate the matter of piles of burning currency being discovered at former Delhi HC judge Justice Yashwant Varma’s residence. It was a straightforward, unequivocal decision for us.
The contents of the report, we understood, were surely to further entrench a systemic crisis of faith confronting the judiciary, one we desire to be stronger for the health of our democracy. But the consequence of this opacity was a more overarching concern for us.
It was the right thing to do (in our assessment of Justice Khanna’s tenure as the chief justice, we noted that his unwillingness to put out the report in public, which had been submitted to the Court on May 5, had squandered “an opportunity to reform an opaque procedure in the backdrop of a historic moment for the judiciary”). The report should have been published on the Supreme Court website, not just sent to the President. It was and is the property of the Supreme Court and this duty was owed to the public. The Court’s decision not to publish was our inspiration to publish in public interest. The people, quite simply, had a right to know about the outcome.
On May Day of 1990, a copy of the latest issue of The Lawyers magazine, published then by our co-founder Indira Jaising - which published the full audit report of the Punjab Accountant General of Justice V. Ramaswami - was shared with the chief justice of India. With the shrouded Justice Varma report, The Leaflet experienced a similar journalistic obligation: from the beginning we asked the most crucial unanswered questions and trailed the report closely. Until we had it.
