Ex-CJI Verma's family refuses Padma Bhushan

Pushpa Verma has also written how “the greatest honour to him remains how he is held in the hearts and minds of his fellow countrymen, as a true friend not just to women and youth, but to those, most in need of one”.

This, she writes, is what will remain “invaluable to us, him and the constitutional ideal of justice he fought for”.

The awards are due to be presented by President Pranab Mukherjee at a function held at Rashtrapati Bhavan around March/April.

Verma's contemporaries also feel that Padma Vibhushan would have been much more suitable for a former chief justice of his eminence.

Justice Rajinder Sachar, a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, expressed his horror at the “insensitivity” of the bureaucracy and said giving him the Padma Bhushan and not the Padma Vibhushan was a “shoddy job”.