Can motion to remove judge be answer to culpable crime: VP

Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday questioned whether a motion to remove a judge is an adequate response to a culpable crime.

“If there has been a crime, a culpable act, why weren’t proceedings to punish the guilty initiated?” he asked, referring to the cash haul recovered from an outhouse after a fire at the residence of Justice Yashwant Varma in New Delhi in March, when he was serving as a judge in the Delhi High Court.

Speaking at Punjab Raj Bhavan, where he stayed overnight before embarking on a two-day visit to Himachal Pradesh, the Rajya Sabha Chairman, without naming Justice Varma, said the unaccounted, illegal and evidently tainted cash haul had raised multiple concerns and potentially blown the lid off a can of worms involving corruption.

“It has raised multiple issues. First and foremost, why no FIR was registered in the case, which renders the claim of equality before law elusive, untenable and puts it on the quicksand of fragility,” said the Vice-President, who has been indicated by the government that the impeachment motion may be first moved in the Upper House during the coming monsoon session of Parliament.

Dhankhar questioned why an inconsequential inquiry that could serve no tangible purpose was conducted? “Chief Justices of two high courts and a high court judge painstakingly laboured on a report at the precious cost of constitutional duty,” he quipped.

Dhankhar wondered if the removal process as per the Constitution could give immunity from investigation and prosecution. “Can there be a judicial investigation or prosecution,” he asked.

Asserting that aborting investigation in a democracy will cause excruciating pain to the people, he said the Bar needed to blow off the cover. “Let the truth be out — source of money, its handlers, purpose and sharks be exposed, and the guilty brought to justice,” the VP remarked.

“I would quote Thomas Fuller (a historical figure) who said over 300 years ago, ‘Be you never so high, the law is above you’. Time saves and not betrays the soul of democracy,” the VP added.

He said the government of the day feels handicapped, as it is unable to register an FIR due to a judicial order. “And that judicial order is more than three decades old. It provides virtual immunity. Unless permission is accorded by a functionary at the highest level in the judiciary, an FIR can’t be registered. So, I pose a question to myself, in deep pain, worried, concerned and in anguish — why was that permission not given? That was the minimum that could have been done at the earliest,” Dhankhar said.

He said permission to file FIR could have been given on the very first day or at least after the report by a committee of judges that indicted Justice Varma.

“A committee of judges cannot substitute an FIR or constitutional removal mechanism for judges,” he asserted, while regretting that more than three months have been lost and the investigation has not yet been initiated.

He asked, “If the temple of justice is so sacrileged, so tainted, so besmirched…then where will the people go to seek justice?”

Opining that the people’s confidence can be restored only by a thorough and scientific investigation, the VP said: “Surely the cash will not come without a purpose and the purpose can’t be legitimate.”

Later, Dhankhar interacted with a delegation of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association.

It may be recalled that Justice Varma was indicted by a three-member committee constituted by then Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna after the discovery of unaccounted-for cash following a fire at his residence in New Delhi.

Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice GS Sandhawalia, Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court, and Justice Anu Sivaraman of the Karnataka High Court comprised the three-member in-house inquiry committee constituted by then Chief Justice Khanna on March 22. The panel, in its report to then Chief Justice Khanna on May 4, had indicted Justice Varma.

However, Justice Varma, who was transferred to the Allahabad High Court during the controversy, maintained innocence over the cash haul and refused to resign, prompting then Chief Justice Khanna to write to the President and the Prime Minister to take measures for his removal.

It is learnt that the probe panel had recommended Justice Varma’s removal and Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal will move the impeachment motion in the Rajya Sabha based on the report for which the Centre has already initiated the process of building all-party consensus.