The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking registration of an FIR and court-monitored SIT probe into alleged discovery of half-burnt cash following a fire at Allahabad High Court judge Yashwant Varma’s residence here in March 2025 when he was a judge of the Delhi High Court.”You are an advocate. This is just a misuse of the judicial process. All for cheap publicity… We are not inclined to entertain this,” a Bench of Justice PS Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe said, dismissing the petition filed by advocate Ghanshyam Upadhyay.The petitioner contended that mere resigning from office does not erase criminal liability for unaccounted money.The Bench noted that earlier a similar petition was dismissed.Upadhyay said the earlier petition was dismissed on technical ground that no complaint was filed but in this case, he has filed a complaint.Faced with proceedings for his removal for misconduct over recovery of unaccounted half-burnt wads of cash from his official residence in Delhi on March 14 last year during a fire incident, Justice Varma on April 9 submitted his resignation to President Droupadi Murmu.He was transferred from the Delhi High Court to the Allahabad High Court following the controversy.His resignation, if accepted by the President, would render the proceedings for his removal as a judge infructuous and he would join the league of tainted judges such as Calcutta High Court Judge Justice Soumitra Sen and Sikkim High Court Chief Justice PD Dinakaran who chose to quit in the midst of removal proceedings.The resignation, however, makes him vulnerable to criminal proceedings as he loses the immunity enjoyed by constitutional court judges.Justice Varma has also withdrawn from the ongoing inquiry conducted by a Lok Sabha-appointed panel under the Judges Inquiry Act, 1968 for his removal, saying his continued participation in it would legitimise an earlier inquiry, where he was asked to “answer the unanswerable” question on the source of money allegedly found from his Delhi residence when he was a judge of the Delhi High Court.The committee headed by Justice Aravind Kumar of the Supreme Court — which probed into the allegations of misconduct against Justice Varma — submitted its report to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on May 18.Claiming to be a victim of a vilification campaign, Justice Varma said the incident related to a fire that occurred in a storeroom within his official residence during the Holi break in March 2025 when he and his spouse were away on vacation in a remote location with limited connectivity and he was informed about it only after it had been brought under control. He said he was not aware of the alleged discovery of cash at the premises until later.Questioning the procedural fairness of the committee’s proceedings, Justice Varma alleged that several witnesses who had given testimony favourable to him were dropped without explanation.In a setback to Justice Varma, the Supreme Court had on January 16 refused to interfere with the inquiry initiated by the Lok Sabha Speaker under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 for his removal as a judge.On March 22, 2025 then Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna had constituted a three-member committee to conduct an inquiry into discovery of unaccounted currency at Justice Varma’s Delhi residence on March 14, 2025.The then CJI Khanna had recommended his removal to the Government after an in-house committee of Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Sheel Nagu (now an SC judge), Himachal Pradesh High Court Chief Justice GS Sandhawalia, and Karnataka High Court judge Justice Anu Sivaraman indicted him for misconduct in its May 4, 2025 report.