Forgery by police in forgery case: Allahabad High Court orders perjury probe

The Allahabad High Court has directed its Registrar General to probe the fabrication of an arrest memo submitted by the police in response to a habeas corpus petition alleging irregularities in the arrest of a man accused of forgery [Junaid and another v. State of UP and 4 Others]

A Bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev found that the arrest memo submitted before the trial court at the time of remand was different from the one submitted by the police before the High Court.

The Court found that the police added grounds of arrest to the arrest memo after the remand proceedings and "perhaps" after the filing of the habeas corpus petition.

"It is necessary to mention here that in the original arrest memo, this was never entered into by the I.O. and in order to perfect the arrest memo, perhaps after the habeas corpus petition was filed before this Court, by fabricating entries in Item Nos.12 and 13 of the second page of the arrest memo, which clearly reflect that fabricated document was placed before this Court along with the counter affidavit," the Court said.

The Court was dealing with the habeas corpus plea moved by one Junaid, who was arrested by the Aligarh police on August 6. He alleged that the arrest memo provided to him did not have the grounds of arrest and thus his custody was in violation of the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court.

During the hearing, Junaid's counsel produced a certified copy of the arrest memo placed before the remand magistrate. He also pointed to the additions made to the arrest memo filed by the police in its response to the habeas corpus plea.

On comparing the two documents, the High Court observed that the grounds of arrest mentioned in the original arrest memo were "perfunctory". It added the document filed before the High Court was fabricated.

"The certified copy reflects that the unfabricated original document that was placed before the Magistrate at the time of the remand. Thus, it is clear that the fabrication in the said document has been done by the police on a date after the remand proceedings and perhaps after the habeas corpus petition was filed," the Court said.

The Court noted that the documents may have been fabricated by the investigating officer. Taking a serious note of the offence committed by the police, the Court passed the following direction:

"This Court considers it necessary to direct the Registrar General of this Court to proceed under Section 379 of BNSS for cases mentioned in Section 215 of BNSS, as the offence has been committed in a judicial proceeding. After the inquiry, if the Registrar General is satisfied that prima facie, an offence relating to fabrication of documents and perjury has been committed before this Court, on the basis of perusal of the documents/records of this case, in such an eventuality, he shall do the needful and file a case before the Court of competent jurisdiction against those found prima facie involved in the offence." 

Concluding that the grounds of arrest given to the accused were inadequate, the Court ordered his release.

Senior Advocate Mohit Singh and advocate Subir Lal represented the petitioner.

[Read Order]