New Delhi: Justice Yashwant Verma of Allahabad High Court has probably submitted his resignation to the President. Draupadi Murmu on Friday, but he went down screaming. In a letter addressed to Supreme Court Justice Arvind Kumar, who heads the judges’ inquiry committee, the controversial HC judge faulted the committee’s process to test the veracity of allegations related to the discovery of huge amounts of unaccounted burnt cash from his official residence. Questioning the committee’s decision to proceed without any concrete evidence against him, Justice Verma said such a process left him no option but to withdraw, as his further participation would legitimize a process that “asks me to give unassailable answers – where did the money come from”. “Parallel to this, I have also written a letter to Her Excellency the President of India,” he said. The video, recorded by the first responders – firemen and police – of the fire incident at his residence in central Delhi on the night of March 14-15 last year and later uploaded on the Supreme Court website, proved Justice Verma’s murder. If his evidence before the committee was damning, it became even more trenchant during his cross-examination by Justice Verma’s lawyers, as they sketched the discovery of the cash and the conduct of the people present in the judge’s house that night. Justice Verma was considered very close to Justice DY Chandrachud, who had a two-year tenure as CJI from November 2022 to November 2024. An SC bench headed by him had in March 2024 quashed a CBI FIR and an ECIR by the Enforcement Directorate against Justice Verma, who, as a lawyer and before his appointment as an HC judge, had come forward as a non-executive director of Simbhaoli Sugar Limited in an alleged bank loan fraud case. One of his main complaints was that the committee had put the onus of proving his innocence on the basis of evidence collected by the inquiry committee constituted by the then CJI Sanjiv Khanna. He said the investigation report could not serve as evidence or be relevant to any future proceedings. His decision to challenge the inquiry proceedings, its report and the then CJI Khanna’s recommendation of removal motion was quashed by the SC bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and AG Masih on August 7 last year. Justice Verma said that the storeroom from where the burnt cash was allegedly found and where the video was recorded was never seized by the police. Moreover, since the room was accessible to all, it could not be the responsibility of the judge to keep track of who kept what in the vast complex of the official bungalow, which also included residential quarters for domestic help. Justice Verma said that he left it for the coming generation to decide “whether such an obligation can ever be discharged or can fairly be imposed on the occupants of such premises”. He said that there is no basis or evidence in the allegations and allegations made against him. Saying there was no concrete evidence to prove the charges against him, Justice Verma said the criminal trial would be conducted in a process undisclosed by law. “The burden of proof has effectively been reversed without making any substantive case.” Justice Verma said, “I am extremely disappointed that despite the serious nature of these proceedings, which could have the potential consequence of removing a sitting judge of a High Court from constitutional office, the Commission (Committee) did not intervene despite the shocking manner of the proceedings.”