“If there has been a crime, why wasn’t it punished,” asks Jagdeep Dhankhar on Justice Yashwant Varma issue

Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar during a meeting with Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association President Sartej Singh Narula, Vice-President Nilesh Bhardwaj, Honourary Secretary Gagandeep Jammu, and advocate Ashish Bisnoi, at Raj Bhavan in Chandigarh. Photo: @VPIndia via PTI

Is a parliamentary motion to remove Justice Yashwant Varma the answer, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar asked a gathering of Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association, in Chandigarh on Friday (June 6, 2025) adding that “if there has been a crime, why wasn’t it punished?”

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Wednesday (June 4, 2025) said the government would bring out a resolution in Parliament in the monsoon session for impeachment motion against Justice Varma. Justice Varma was subject of a probe by a Supreme Court-appointed panel after a fire incident at his Delhi residence led to the discovery of several burnt sacks of cash at the outhouse.

Mr. Dhankhar said the government of the day was handicapped because of a three-decade-old judicial order that did not allow it to register a First Information Report (FIR) without permission from the judiciary. The Vice-President said, “So I pose a question to myself, in deep pain, worried, concerned, in anguish — why was that permission not given? That was the minimum that could have been done on the earliest occasion.”

He also questioned why even after the Supreme Court probe, Justice Varma has not been punished. “I have raised the issue. Ultimately, if a motion is brought to remove a judge, is that the answer? If there has been a crime, a culpable act shaking the foundations of democracy — the rule of law, why wasn’t it punished? We have lost more than three months, and the investigation has not even been initiated. Whenever you go to court, they ask why the FIR was delayed.”

The permission should have been granted soon after the cash was discovered and if not then it should have come up at least when the Supreme Court-appointed panel filed its report considering the “compulsive, expedient situation”. The cash haul, Mr. Dhankhar said, was “obviously tainted, unaccounted, illegal and unexplained” and the system must move to find out “whose money it is.”

He further asked, “Has the money influenced the judiciary in judicial work? All these issues are agitating not only the minds of lawyers but also people on the street. But let the lid be blown off the can of worms. Let these skeletons in the cupboards come out. Why was there no FIR? Why has there been no investigation at all?”

The gap between “may be true” and “must be true”, the Vice-President said, is very thin. “But this thin distance has to be negotiated by evidence of unimpeachable veracity. So, I put innocence at a very high level. I am not aware of who is guilty. But one thing is for sure — a crime of great enormity, shaking the foundations of the judiciary and democracy, has taken place. I hope it will be addressed,” he said.