Police Lapse In Seizing Cash Was 'Slipshod', But Doesn't Aid Justice Varma's Defence: Inquiry Committee

The 3-judge committee, which held the inquiry against Justice Yashwant Varma, criticised the Delhi police for not seizing the currency notes which were discovered during a firefighting operation at the storeroom of his official bungalow.

The failure of the police and fire personnel in leaving the spot without preparing any panchnama or seizure memo was termed by the committee as "slipshod." However, the committee observed that its mandate was not to find fault with the police procedure. Since the evidence indicated the presence of substantial piles of cash, contradicting Justice Varma's claim that there was no amount of cash stored in his premises, the committee held that the inability to precisely ascertain the amount of currency recovered was immaterial. Consequently, the committee ruled that Justice Varma could not invoke the lack of seizure as a defence.

The committee said the higher police officials had sought to explain their refusal to register FIR by citing the “sensitivity of the issue” and the absence of Justice Varma at his residence at the time of the incident.

The relevant observations from the committee's report, which was published by The Leaflet, are as follows :

"The higher police officials have also sought to explain before us the reasons as such why they chose not to initiate any investigation or lodge an FIR on account of the sensitivity of the issue and lack of information of any crime scene and the absence of Justice Varma in his residence being out of station and legal position as such regarding lodging of FIR against a sitting Judge. The ambit of the Committee is not to find fault with the action or inaction of the fire personnel or the police personnel as discussed above and, therefore, it would not be appropriate for us to comment upon the manner in which the fire personnel or the police personnel have gone about concluding the proceedings without preparing a proper Panchnama or seizure memo depicting the correct situation at the spot which can only be termed as slip shod. Therefore, the argument of Justice Varma that the verification of the quantity of the cash had not been properly done by the officials and it has rather been done by the police officials who had prepared the reports and were not present at the spot and while referring to P-1 and P-1/A has tried to punch holes which have not to be answered by the Committee and the same would not take him a long way in view of the issues to be addressed. The stand of Justice Varma is clear that there was no cash present in the store room and it is not his case that he had kept some amount of cash and was ouching for the same and the addition has been made by some person who had planted the said amount and since it is his case that it was a conspiracy and, therefore, the quantification of the volume of the currency is of no consequence since it has come from the statements of the witnesses and from the video recordings that there was reasonably large amount of volume of currency in the store room which got affected by the fire and clearly visible which aspect Justice Varma has failed to explain either in his initial statement or before the Committee, though having been given reasonable opportunity. "

Also Read - Justice Yashwant Varma's Conduct After Fire Incident Unnatural, Says Inquiry Panel Rejecting Conspiracy Theories