“Cash at judge’s home”: Phones, call records to be preserved amid fears of evidence tampering
Call records of phone numbers, which were contacted by people present on the premises and calls received by them immediately after the fire broke out, will also be scanned as part of a technical investigation, said Delhi Police sources
New Delhi: Amid suspicion of evidence tampering bid in the “cash at home” of Delhi High Court judge Yashwant Varma, senior judges and investigators probing the March 14 incident have asked the former to secure his phone and call records.
Apart from conducting forensic tests on the burnt currency notes allegedly recovered from an outhouse on the premises of Justice Varma’s official bungalow, investigators are also expected to inspect call records of all phones which were present at 30 Tughlak Road, Near Lok Kalyan Marg Metro, on March 14 night when the fire broke out.
Call records of phone numbers, which were contacted by people present on the premises and calls received by them immediately after the fire broke out, will also be scanned as part of a technical investigation, said Delhi Police sources.
In his defence, Justice Varma has denied any wrongdoing and alleged a conspiracy to malign him, outrightly rejecting the insinuation that he removed currency from the storeroom.
He is also reported to have challenged visuals of burnt wads of Rs-500 notes shown in a video given by Delhi Police to Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna. The video was purportedly shot around the time of firefighting at the outhouse on the premises of Justice Varma’s official residence.
Investigators suspect that an attempt to tamper with evidence may have been made during or immediately after firefighters doused the blaze in “stationery and domestic articles in a storeroom” before leaving at 1.56 a.m. on March 15.
Witness accounts of Delhi Police Control Room personnel present at the fire scene, along with firefighters, and the subsequent video recording of the fire scene have lent credence to the theory about the presence of burnt Rs-500 notes at the site.
However, Justice Varma has told the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court D.K. Upadhyaya, “I was totally shocked to see the contents of the video since that depicted something which was not found on site as I had seen it.” He added: “It is a room which is completely disassociated from my living areas and a boundary wall demarcates my living area from that outhouse. I only wish that the media had conducted some enquiry before I came to be indicted and defamed in the press.”
“I unequivocally state that neither I nor any of my family members had stored or kept any cash or currency in that storeroom at any point of time,” he said.
“During the exercise to douse the fire, all staff and the members of his household were asked to move away from the scene of the incident in view of safety concerns,” said the judge, adding that after the fire was doused, they (all staff and family members) saw no cash or currency on site, said Justice Varma.
On Friday, CJI Sanjiv Khanna constituted a three-member committee to conduct an inquiry against Justice Varma. “The Chief Justice of India has constituted a three-member Committee consisting of Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana; Justice G.S. Sandhawalia, Chief Justice of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh; and Anu Sivaraman, Judge of the High Court of Karnataka, for conducting an inquiry into the allegations against Justice Yashwant Varma, a sitting Judge of the High Court of Delhi,” said a press statement released by the Supreme Court.
The Committee has not been given a time frame to complete its probe, and only after it submits its report will a decision be taken by the CJI if the findings warrant The statement added that the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court for the time being has been asked not to assign any judicial work to Justice Yashwant Varma.
