Cash discovery at Delhi HC judge's home: Lawyer expresses 'pain', HC says 'conscious'
New Delhi (PTI): A senior lawyer appearing in the Delhi High Court on Friday expressed "shock and pain" after an alleged incident of cash discovery at the official residence of its sitting judge Justice Yashwant Varma came to light.
The purported discovery followed a major fire at the residence.
After the lawyer said many in the bar were "shaken" by the development, Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya lamented, "So is everybody. We are conscious."
Senior advocate Arun Bhardwaj mentioned before a bench comprising the chief justice and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela to take some steps to stop such incidents from occurring in the future.
"Today's incident has pained us a lot, many of us. Please take some steps on the administrative side so that these incidents do not happen in future and the truthfulness of the judicial system is maintained," Bhardwaj said.
He added, "We respect the system a lot. Each of the judges are respected a lot. We are shaken my lords and demoralised. Please take some steps. I am not expressing my pain any further and I am sure I am expressing the pain of many of my brothers. Please take some steps to see that such incidents do not happen."
At around 11 am, the court master of Justice Varma's court announced that the division bench was on leave on Friday and any urgent mentioning could be made before another bench.
The Supreme Court collegium headed by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna has reportedly decided to transfer Justice Varma from the Delhi High Court to his parent Allahabad High Court following the incident.
Justice Varma was currently heading a division bench, which was dealing with cases of sales tax, GST, company appeals and other appeals of the original side.
He was enrolled as an advocate on August 8, 1992. The judge was appointed as an additional judge of the Allahabad High Court on October 13, 2014.
According to official information, he took oath as a permanent judge of the Allahabad High Court on February 1, 2016 and was appointed as a judge of the Delhi High Court on October 11, 2021.
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
