In Defense of Judicial Integrity: A Constitutional and Criminal Law Critique of the Inquiry into Justice Yashwant Varma

"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson

- TUSHAR ARORA

The inquiry against Hon'ble Mr. Justice Yashwant Varma, a sitting judge of the Allahabad High Court, has not merely invited public scrutiny; it has forced open foundational questions about the architecture of our Constitution, the limits of executive power, and the sanctity of due process.

While it is couched within the Supreme Court's 1999 in-house mechanism, it is imperative that it be evaluated against the rigor demanded by modern Indian criminal law as codified under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA), and the broader constitutional framework under Articles 14, 21, 124(4), and the Basic Structure doctrine.

First, from a purely criminal law standpoint, the process followed in the inquiry falls far short of what would be admissible or even investigatively permissible in a court of law. The committee has relied upon photographs of charred currency and oral statements from fire personnel. However, there was no recovery in the manner prescribed under Section 185 of the BNSS, which governs the formalities of seizure. The panchnama, a critical evidentiary document for corroborating recovery and seizure, is conspicuously absent. No seizure memo was prepared, no police procedure followed, and the scene was neither secured nor preserved according to criminal jurisprudence. Under Section 106 of the BSA, the burden of proof shifts only when foundational facts are first established by the prosecution, which was not done in this case. The inquiry committee's assumptions based on visual impressions and witness recollections cannot override the statutory preconditions for establishing liability in criminal law.