ON THE EVENING OF MARCH 15, Delhi High Court chief justice, D.K. Upadhyaya made the first communication to Sanjiv Khanna, the sitting chief justice of India, about a jarring development the previous midnight in a High Court judge’s bungalow on Tughlaq road. Till nearly 2 AM the previous night, fire personnel and Delhi police officials had scoured, taking videos and pictures of an outhouse in the residence of Yashwant Varma, after piles of burnt currency were discovered following an unexplained fire. A scandal such as this had not graced the Indian judiciary in at least a few years.
Khanna asked Upadhyaya to make some early inquiries through his registrar general, with Varma and the Commissioner of Police, and over the next few days, he would quietly observe the developments. On March 20, six days after the cash was first discovered, after Upadhyaya would send pictures and video footage of the cash, Khanna would sit down with the collegium and consider the idea of repatriating Varma back to Allahabad.
The next day, seven days after the fire broke out, Times of India carried a front page story: ‘Fire at HC judge’s house leads to recovery of cash pile’. As the news of the fire and the Court’s decision to surreptitiously transfer out Varma gathered momentum, the Supreme Court put out a press release stating that the decision to transfer was unconnected to the cash controversy. It was not a convincing stance. “I frankly, with the greatest of respect to the Supreme Court chief justice, do not believe what he’s saying here,” Arnab Goswami blasted on Republic TV, on a prime time slot, “because it lacks transparency.”
That same day, Khanna would receive the report from Upadhyaya who would indicate that “prima facie…the entire matter warrants a deeper probe.” He would ask Upadhyaya to pose certain questions to Varma regarding the issue and direct Varma not to dispose of his mobile phone.
