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(i) That the document or electronic record so recovered from the accused is a forged document. The definition of forgery has been incorporated U/s 463 IPC as making of any forged document or an electronic record or part thereof with an intent to cause damage or injury to public or any other person or to support any claim or title or to cause any person to part with any property or to enter into any express or implied contract or with an intent to commit a fraud. The term falsification of document has been defined U/s 464 IPC.

16. Besides, the accused has also been charged for commission of offence U/ S 467, 468 and 471 IPC. The offence U/S 467 IPC relates to forgery of a document purporting to be a valuable security, will etc. This provision makes an act of forgery of document as defined Under section 463 IPC an indictable act entailing punishment for imprisonment extending up to life imprisonment when said act of forgery pertains to documents in the nature of valuable security, Will, adoption authority, authorization for financial transaction, property exchanges. Whereas, Section 468 IPC deals with forgery of documents for the purpose of cheating. This provision makes an act of fabrication of documents as defined U/S 463 IPC, an indictable act entailing punishment of up to 7 years imprisonment when the intention behind the act of such forgery is of using the said document to commit the offence of cheating. The offence under this section does not require that the accused should actually commit the offence of cheating, what matters here is the intention or the purpose of the person committing such an act of forgery. Section 471 IPC deals with the offence of using a forged document as a genuine one. In order to hold a person liable for this offence, what is required to be established is that either the accused has himself made a forged document or he was having reason to believe or knowledge that such document was forged and having such knowledge or reason to believe, the accused has used the said document as a FIR NO.226/2009 AISHWARYA AISHWARYA SHARMA St. Vs. Surender Pal SHARMA Date: 2024.05.28 16:02:01 +0530 genuine one.

18. So far as charge for the offence U/S 468 IPC is concerned, the discussion made in the preceding part of this judgment suggests that to make a person liable FIR NO.226/2009 AISHWARYA AISHWARYA St. Vs. Surender Pal SHARMA Date: 2024.05.28 16:02:09 +0530 for this offence, the forgery of a document by the accused must be accompanied necessarily with an intention of cheating on the part of such person. Succinctly, for holding a person guilty under the ambit of this section, it has to be proved that such person has made a wrongful gain by deceiving the person or other entity. It is necessary that some kind of advantage is enjoyed by such person deceiving the other. In the present case, the allegations and the evidences led by the prosecution on the face of it suggests that upon deriving the knowledge regarding the making of fabricated marksheet/certificates for consideration by the accused, PW 2 ASI Mahesh posed himself as a decoy customer and approached the accused for procuring the 10th class marksheet and certificate pertaining to CBSE for a consideration of Rs. 10,000/-. It is pertinent to mention that the above-named PW-2 ASI Mahesh was having a categorical knowledge regarding the fact that the documents so received by him from the accused were the fabricated documents. In fact such documents were obtained by abovenamed PW-2 by way of a decoy set up to apprehend the accused red handed and hence, it cannot by any stretch of imagination be presumed that PW-2 ASI Mahesh was deceived by the accused by handing over the forged 10th class marksheet and certificate of CBSE to him and has derived wrongful gain by such deception. In a situation where presumably, the accused might have represented to PW-2 that the documents so delivered to him were in fact genuine documents and acting on such belief, PW-2 had paid the consideration amount of RS. 10,000/- to the accused, charged Under section 468 IPC might have been established subject of course to the fact that the prosecution was also successful in proving that accused himself was the maker of said documents. Having said so, the above-mentioned essential ingredients for FIR NO.226/2009 AISHWARYA SHARMA SHARMA St. Vs. Surender Pal Date: 2024.05.28 16:02:15 +0530 establishing the offence under Section 468 IPC appears to be clearly lacking in the present case, hence, such charge against the accused also appears to be completely unfounded.

21. As far as offence U/S 474 IPC is concerned, it is clear from the discussion made in the preceding part of this judgment that this provision makes offence an act of coming into possession of a document described Under Section 466 or 467 IPC with the knowledge that the said document is forged along with the intention that the same may be used as a genuine document. Even though, from the testimony of PW-Anil Kumar Nahara who is the official from CBSE, it is established that the impugned certificate and marksheet upon their verification were found to be fabricated as per the report dated 10.07.2015 i.e. Ex. PW3/A but establishing such fact by the prosecution only satisfies the first limb of the offence under Section 474 IPC that is the documents allegedly recovered from the accused were forged and were of description as mentioned under Section 466 IPC, it being a public record. But apart from such facts, it was also imperative on the part of prosecution to establish the recovery of said fabricated documents with some cogent and clinching evidence. It was admitted by PW-1 Retired SI Naresh Chander and PW-2 ASI Mahesh that at the time of the alleged recovery of the impugned marksheet and certificate from the accused, independent public persons were present and were in fact asked to join the recovery proceedings but they refused to do so. It has also been admitted by both the above-named witnesses that even at the time of subsequent recovery of some alleged forged material and articles made from the house of accused, family members of the accused including his sister who was also undisputedly working with Delhi police was also present but they were never joined in the investigation, nor were made the witnesses to AISHWARYA AISHWARYA FIR NO.226/2009 SHARMA SHARMA Date: 2024.05.28 St. Vs. Surender Pal 16:02:36 +0530 such recovery for the reasons unexplained. There appears no sincere effort on the part of PW-1 Retired SI Naresh Chander and PW-5 Inspector Ashok Kumar either at the time of alleged recovery at the spot or at the time of subsequent recovery from the house of accused to join in two or more public persons as recovery witnesses as per mandate of Section 100 (4) Cr. P.C. despite the availability of public persons/ independent witnesses. The explanations which PW-1, PW-2 and PW-5 have tried to put forth regarding such non-compliance is that the public persons were either not available or those who were available failed to join the investigation and left without disclosing their names and addresses , this justification given by the abovementioned witnesses does not appear to be plausible and not only raises serious doubts on the prosecution story as whole but also impeaches the credibility of the alleged recovery of documents shown to be effected from the accused. Therefore, I am of the considered view that the prosecution has even failed to establish the alleged recovery of the forged documents and other incriminating articles from the accused with any cogent and convincing evidences and hence, one and only irresistible conclusion arises that the alleged forged documents and articles were either not recovered from the accused persons or same were planted upon them so as to falsely implicate him in the present case. This inference further gains strength from the fact that there is a glaring contradiction in the testimony of PW-1 and PW-2 as PW-1 during the course of his deposition stated that PW-2 was not reporting the progress of the secret information relating to forgery of documents by the accused to him as such progress was being reported to Inspector Ranjeet Dhaka under whom the entire decoy set up and raiding team was constituted and also that, he transpired about the AISHWARYA AISHWARYA SHARMA FIR NO.226/2009 SHARMA Date: 2024.05.28 St. Vs. Surender Pal 16:02:44 +0530 information only on 21.07.2009. There is a self-contradiction on the part of PW-1 in his own version that he was unaware of the information until 21.07.2009 as he himself stated that the prior payment of Rs. 8,000/- made by PW-2 to accused as an advance amount for procuring the fabricated marksheet/certificate was arranged by collecting contribution from the staff in which he contributed amount of Rs. 3,000/- to 4,000/. The testimony of PW-2 ASI Mahesh clearly states the information was received by him on 12.07.2019 and on the same day itself, advance payment of Rs. 8,000/- was made by him to the accused for procuring the fabricated marksheet/certificate in pursuance of the decoy set up for nabbing the accused. Therefore, it clearly perceives that PW-1 having contributed the amount of Rs. 3,000/- to 4,000/- out of the advance amount of Rs. 8,000/- given to the accused by PW-2 on 12.07.2009, was well within the knowledge regarding such alleged information and has made false deposition in that regard before the court. Pertinently, even the above-named Insp. Ranjeet Dhaka being the overall supervising officer of the entire decoy plan and also having allegedly constituted raiding party comprising of PW-1, PW-2 along with other officials namely Ct. Dharma Singh and Ct. Mukesh, was never associated in the investigation of the case nor have been cited as a prosecution witness. Even the above-named Ct. Mukesh being a member of the raiding team was neither cited nor examined as a prosecution witness in the present case for the reasons unexplained. The only reason of such crucial omission and lapses which can be foreseen is that the recovery of the alleged fabricated documents was planted upon the accused either by or at the instance of the above-named Insp. Ranjeet Dhaka or the so called raiding team of police so as to bring the accused at a receiving end for effecting the FIR NO.226/2009 AISHWARYA AISHWARYA SHARMA SHARMA Date: 2024.05.28 St. Vs. Surender Pal 16:02:50 +0530 settlement of matrimonial disputed between the sister of accused namely ASI Arvinder Kaur and her brother-in-law SI Vijay Naru, who were also working with Delhi Police. This defence of accused has also been probabilized by him through the certified copy of the record of chargesheet pertaining to FIR number 156/2008, P.S. Dabri and the copy of the judgments and orders dated 02.07.2018 passed by the Ld. Judge Family Court, Dwarka in the petition for dissolution of marriage of the sister and brother-in-law of the accused. The said records which are EX. DW- 1/1 and Ex. DW-1/2 respectively relates to the contemporaneous time period and sufficiently probablizes the defence of the accused. Therefore, charge for offence U/S 474 IPC also appears to be unsustainable and the accused cannot be held liable for the same.