New Delhi [India], June 17 : Senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal on Tuesday slammed the Supreme Court's in-house inquiry against Justice Yashwant Varma, saying that the three-member committee indicted the judge without hearing him and without following any procedure.
In the press conference, he said the committee report did not mention the amount of money recovered from the outhouse near Justice Varma's residence in New Delhi. The committee concluded that if the cash was placed in the outhouse, it must have been after the judge's permission, said Sibal.
The in-house report was prepared by Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court; Justice G.S. Sandhawalia, Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court; and Justice Anu Sivaraman of the Karnataka High Court.
"You decided against a High Court judge without any inquiry and procedure...The judge was not even heard. This is absolutely shocking," Sibal said in the press conference.
He said that in all other impeachment cases against judges in the past, the facts were not in dispute, unlike in Justice Varma's case.
Sibal also alleged that the Centre is protecting Allahabad High Court Judge Shekhar Kumar Yadav, who was accused of making "communal" remarks in 2024.
"Unfortunately, the political class is brought into the act, and this government is protecting a judge (Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav). For all impeachments in the past, the case here is entirely different," he said.
A fire at Justice Varma's residence in New Delhi in March, when he was a judge at the Delhi High Court, had led to the discovery of unaccounted cash in an outhouse.
," ...