Supreme Court to hear plea today for FIR against Justice Yashwant Varma
The Supreme Court on Friday will hear a petition seeking the registration of an FIR against Delhi High Court judge Justice Yashwant Varma over the discovery of cash at his official residence during a fire on March 14 night.
The plea by Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara will be heard by a bench of Justices A S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan.
The Supreme Court had in the 1991 ruling in K Veeraswami Vs. Union of India held that approval of the Chief Justice of India is mandatory for registering a criminal case under Section 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code against a sitting High Court or Supreme Court judge.
The petition challenges this. “The consequence of the aforesaid direction, that no FIR shall be filed, was certainly not present in the minds of the Hon’ble judges. The said direction creates a special class of privileged men/women, immune from the penal laws of the land. Our judges, except for a minority… are men and women of the greatest of erudition, integrity, learning and independence… But incidents where judges are caught red handed accepting money… cannot be denied. The judgement in K Veeraswami’s case, to the knowledge of the petitioners has stood in the way of an FIR being registered even in an offence involving POCSO,” the plea said.
CJI Sanjiv Khanna had on March 22 set up a three-member committee to conduct an inquiry into the allegations against Varma in the wake of the cash discovery. Nedumpara’s petition also questions this and says only the police can investigate the matter. “The resolution of the Collegium investing the committee power to conduct such an investigation is rendered void ab initio inasmuch as the Collegium cannot confer jurisdiction upon itself to order so where the Parliament or the Constitution has conferred none,” it said.
