The statutory inquiry does not identify who physically removed the currency. But it reconstructs the crucial hours after the fire — an unsealed storeroom, cleaning activity, communications with Justice Varma’s establishment and cash that was subsequently no longer available.
New Delhi: The cash was there when fire and police personnel entered the storeroom at Justice Yashwant Varma’s official residence. By the time the premises were inspected later, it was not. Who removed it? The 150-page report of the Judges Inquiry Committee does not answer that question. The Committee has held all three Articles of Charge against Justice Varma proved. It has concluded that substantial quantities of ₹500 denomination currency notes were present inside the storeroom after the fire, that the evidence was not preserved and that the explanations subsequently offered by Justice Varma were evasive and unsatisfactory.
But it has not identified any person as having physically removed the currency. Instead, the report reconstructs what happened after the fire was extinguished and the first responders left the premises. The storeroom was not sealed. No currency was seized. No inventory was prepared. No panchnama was drawn. Cleaning took place. Justice Varma’s Private Secretary Rajinder Singh Karki and Mohd. Rahil was seen near the storeroom. The Committee examined call records showing communication between Justice Varma and persons attached to his establishment during the relevant period.
Karki and Rahil, who could have explained what happened during the cleaning, were not examined as defence witnesses. It is on this chain of circumstances that the Committee drew an adverse inference against Justice Varma. Yet, while doing so, it stopped short of saying who actually removed the cash. What happened after the fire. The fire broke out during the intervening night of March 14 and 15, 2025, in a storeroom at Justice Varma’s official residence at 30, Tughlaq Crescent, New Delhi. Justice Varma was not present at the residence when the fire broke out.
Fire officials who entered the room said they saw substantial quantities of burnt, half-burnt and wet ₹500 notes. Police personnel who came to the premises also spoke of seeing heaps or bundles of currency. As reported in Part I of this series, none of the money was seized. It was not counted or inventoried. No panchnama was prepared. Not even one note was preserved for examination. The storeroom was also not sealed. What happened after the firefighters and police personnel left the scene became one of the central issues before the statutory Committee.
The evidence of C.G. Rawat, examined as PW-9, assumes relevance here. Rawat told the Committee that after the fire had been extinguished he saw household staff and Justice Varma’s Private Secretary Rajinder Singh Karki near the storeroom.
According to his evidence, when he offered to help, Mohd. Rahil asked him to go back and perform his duty at the main gate. Rawat said that when he passed the storeroom again, Karki and Rahil were still engaged in cleaning work. By morning, according to his testimony, burnt household articles had been taken outside and the cleaning had been completed.
The Committee did not treat cleaning after a fire as an offence by itself. Its finding is based on the circumstances in which the cleaning took place. By then, according to the evidence accepted by the Committee, substantial quantities of currency had already been seen inside the room.
The storeroom therefore contained material which had evidentiary value. Yet the room remained unsealed and the contents were disturbed before a proper inspection and preservation of the evidence could take place. The currency was subsequently not available.
What the call records show — and what they do not
The Committee also examined call-detail records relating to Justice Varma and persons attached to his establishment. The records showed communication during the relevant period. Justice Varma had also stated that he was in communication with Rajinder Singh Karki and Mohd. Rahil.
The Committee, however, did not claim that the call records disclosed what was said. There was no recording of those conversations before it. There was no transcript showing Justice Varma asking anyone to remove currency.
The Committee confined its reliance on the call-detail records to the fact that communication took place and the time at which it took place. The calls therefore do not establish an instruction to remove cash. But the Committee considered them along with the other circumstances before it.
Karki and Rahil were at or near the storeroom. Cleaning was taking place. Justice Varma was in communication with persons attached to his establishment. The room had not been sealed.
The currency which independent officials said they had seen was later unavailable. The Committee then examined whether there was any satisfactory explanation for what happened during this period. It found none.
The report asks, in substance, what Justice Varma was told about the condition of the storeroom, what inquiries he made after being informed of the incident, what instructions were given for preservation of the site and why no immediate complaint was made when the currency later found to be missing had earlier been seen by police and fire personnel.
According to the Committee, these circumstances were not satisfactorily explained.
Why Karki and Rahil matter
Justice Varma was given an opportunity to lead defence evidence. No final list of defence witnesses was filed. Neither Rajinder Singh Karki nor Mohd. Rahil was examined on his behalf.
The Committee repeatedly refers to this omission because both men, on the evidence before it, were in a position to explain what happened in and around the storeroom after the first responders left.
Karki was Justice Varma’s Private Secretary.
Rawat had specifically named Karki and Rahil as being present during the cleaning. Yet neither came before the Committee as a defence witness to contradict Rawat’s account or explain what was being cleaned, what they had seen inside the room or what happened to the material lying there.
The Committee records that no member of the household, personal office, staff or security establishment was examined on Justice Varma’s behalf to support the alternative explanations advanced during the inquiry.
While considering Article II, the Committee returned specifically to Karki and Rahil. It noted that Justice Varma had not examined either of them to rebut Rawat’s evidence regarding their presence and cleaning activity.
The Committee then drew an adverse inference. It found it reasonable, on the material before it, to infer that the activities of Karki and Rahil took place under Justice Varma’s instructions. That is one of the strongest findings in the report.
But it is not the same as a finding that Justice Varma instructed them to remove cash. Nor does the report say that Karki or Rahil physically removed the currency.
The Committee itself draws that line.
It expressly says that it was not recording a finding that any particular individual physically removed the currency because such a conclusion could only be made if supported by the evidence. The evidence before it did not permit that conclusion. Police had already left the evidence unsecured
There is another part of the chain which cannot be separated from what happened later. The currency had already been left unsecured by the officials who first saw it. Police and fire personnel were at the scene. They had seen the notes. Some had photographed or recorded the storeroom. Yet no one seized the currency.
Head Constable Roop Chand was questioned by the Committee about why the notes were not taken into custody. His explanation, recorded in the report, was that the matter involved a sitting High Court judge and was sensitive, and that he acted according to instructions from his Station House Officer.
The room was not sealed. No panchnama was prepared. The Committee has described the failure to seize, inventory, sample or preserve the currency as a material institutional lapse. That lapse came before any later cleaning activity.
Had the cash been seized when it was first seen, there would have been a record of the amount. Had an inventory been prepared, the quantity could have been established. Had even representative notes been preserved, their genuineness could have been examined. Had the storeroom been sealed, any subsequent entry or disturbance would have been capable of being accounted for.
None of that happened.
The first break in the chain of custody therefore occurred while public officials were themselves at the scene. The Committee did not allow this failure to erase the evidence of those officials about what they had seen. But the failure made it impossible to determine the precise amount and left the inquiry without the physical evidence around which the entire case revolved.
Theories of planting and removal
Justice Varma’s defence raised alternative possibilities during the proceedings. These included conspiracy, planting of the currency, involvement of staff and the possibility that fire or police personnel might have removed the notes. The Committee considered these possibilities.
Suggestions were put to witnesses during cross-examination that first responders may have taken the money. They denied doing so. The Committee found no independent eyewitness, electronic or documentary evidence to show that any fire officer, police officer or other first responder removed the currency. It rejected that theory as unsupported.
The allegation of planting or conspiracy met the same fate. The Committee found that no person had been identified as having planted the money, no act of planting had been established and no material was produced to show how such a large quantity of currency could have been brought into the storeroom without detection.
The theories of conspiracy, planting and arson, according to the Committee, remained assertions unsupported by evidence. But rejecting these explanations did not establish who took the currency away. That gap remains.
Why Article II was nevertheless proved
Article II dealt with failure to preserve and interference with material evidence. Justice Varma was not at the residence when the fire started. He was also not present when the first fire officials entered the storeroom.
The Committee has separately recorded the failure of police and other first responders to seize or preserve the currency. Still, it held Article II proved against Justice Varma. Its reasoning begins from the point at which he became aware of the incident. By then, the storeroom had acquired evidentiary significance.
The Committee found that the scene should have been preserved. Instead, it remained unsealed. Cleaning took place. Material inside the storeroom was disturbed. Persons attached to Justice Varma’s establishment were present. The cash subsequently became unavailable.
The Committee found that Justice Varma failed to ensure preservation of the material evidence and that the condition of the scene was altered before lawful sealing and inspection. It did not require proof that he had personally removed the money. It specifically says that the finding under Article II does not depend upon proof of his personal physical removal of the currency.
That is how Article II was proved.
The one question the inquiry does not answer The statutory Committee has decided the issue before it. All three Articles of Charge stand proved. But its report does not complete the physical trail of the currency. The facts recorded by the Committee leave a gap.
The cash was seen by fire and police personnel. It was photographed and recorded. It was not seized. It was not counted. The room was not sealed. The first responders left. Cleaning took place. Karki and Rahil were seen at the storeroom. Justice Varma was in communication with persons attached to his establishment.
The Committee later drew an adverse inference from the circumstances and from the failure to examine witnesses who could have explained what happened. But it did not find who physically removed the notes.
The Committee has fixed responsibility under the Articles of Charge. It has not established the final journey of the currency.
That leaves one question unanswered even after the statutory inquiry:
The cash was there. Who took it out, and where did it go?
