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465. Punishment for forgery.--

Whoever commits forgery shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may KABC030575872015 CC No.20638/2015 extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.

Section 468:- Forgery for purpose of cheating whoever commits forgery, intending that the document or electronic record forged shall be used for the purpose of cheating, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Thus, it is culled out the main ingredients of forgery from aforesaid sections are:

1. Making a False Document

2. As per Section 463 IPC, forgery involves making any false document or false electronic record or part of a document or electronic record.

3. Section 464 IPC further defines when a person is said to have made a false document:

30. Section 471 is intended to apply to persons other than forger himself, but the forger himself is not excluded from the operation of the Section.

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31. To attract Section 471, it is not necessary that the person held guilty under the provision must have forged the document himself or that the person independently charged for forgery of the document must of necessity be convicted, before the person using the forged document, knowing it to be a forged one can be convicted, as long as the fact that the document used stood established or proved to be a forged one.

26. The definition of "false document" is a part of the definition of "forgery". Both must be read together. „Forgery‟ and „Fraud‟ are essentially matters of evidence which could be proved as a fact by direct evidence or by inferences drawn from proved facts. In the case in hand, there is no finding recorded by the trial Court that the respondents have made any false document or part of the document/record to execute mortgage deed under the guise of that „false document‟. Hence, neither respondent no.1 nor respondent no.2 can be held as makers of the forged documents. It is the imposter who can be said to have made the false document by committing forgery. In such an event the trial court as well as appellate court misguided themselves by convicting the accused. Therefore, the High KABC030575872015 CC No.20638/2015 Court has rightly acquitted the accused based on the settled legal position and we find no reason to interfere with the same."