Justice Yashwant Varma seeks legal advice: Who are his lawyers?

Justice Yashwant Varma met a team of lawyers on Wednesday to seek legal opinion prior to his deposition before in-house inquiry committee constituted by the Supreme Court to probe into the alleged recovery of cash from his residence on March 14.

Senior Advocates Siddharth Agarwal and Arundhati Katju and advocates Tara Narula, Stuti Gujral and one other lawyer visited Justice Varma's residence on Monday and Wednesday this week.

Senior Advocate Siddharth Agarwal

The inquiry committee comprising Justice Sheel Nagu (Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court), Justice GS Sandhawalia (Chief Justice of the High Court of Himachal) Pradesh and Justice Anu Sivaraman (Judge of the Karnataka High Court) is currently in Delhi and is expected to visit Justice Varma a couple of times this week.

As per sources the judge is fine tuning his responses that he is expected to state before the inquiry committee since this would form the basis for future action in the matter.

"These proceedings are troublesome. This is a precursor to the impeachment and a possible criminal prosecution," said a highly placed source who is aware of the legal opinion being sought.

A fire at Justice Varma's house had inadvertently led to the recovery of unaccounted cash on March 14, Times of India reported.

The incident led to allegations of corruption against Justice Varma, who has denied such accusations and maintained that it appeared to be a conspiracy to frame him.

The Chief Justice of India (CJI) initiated an in-house probe into the allegations and  set up a three-member committee on March 22 to conduct the probe.

A video of the recovery of burnt cash was also apparently shared by the Delhi Police Commissioner with the Chief Justice of the High Court and has since been shared by the Supreme Court on its website.

The Supreme Court also published a report of Delhi High Court Chief Justice on the incident along with Justice Varma's response.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court Collegium on March 24 also recommended that Justice Varma be repatriated to his parent court - the Allahabad High Court.

The Central government is yet to clear the Collegium decision.