Recently, the Supreme Court recently came across a petition in which a fake document was submitted as an order passed by the Supreme Court itself.

Thereafter, the division bench of the Supreme Court comprising, Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal ordered criminal investigation.

“It is obvious from the report(of the registrar) that the document purporting to be a copy of the order of this Court which is marked by Annexure-III in the report is a fabricated document. Therefore, the Registrar(Judicial Listing) must set the criminal law in motion by lodging a complaint with the jurisdictional police station," 

Case Brief -

In the said matter, the Special Leave Petition was filed wherein the Annexures A and B contained two orders of the Court, dated July 25, 2022, passed by the same Bench. The first order was of dismissal however, surprisingly, the second order was of allowing the SLP.

It is important to highlight that, according to the official court records, the case in question was, in fact, dismissed by the Court.

The after perusing the relevant documents, the Court in its reply has directed the Registrar(Judicial) to hold an inquiry into this aspect and submit a report to the Court. It is worth mentioning that the Court then and there made it clear that if Registrar finds that this is a case of fabrication of orders of this Court, the criminal law will have to be set in motion.

After the report was submitted by the Registrar, the Court examined the report and held that it is clear that the order of the Court marked as one of the annexures in the SLP has been fabricated.

Also, Court recorded that the concerned advocate did not appear though a notice was issued. The Court therefore said that it is for the investigating agency to examine the role allegedly played by the advocate.

Furthermore, the Court instructed the Registrar to submit a copy of this order, including the annexures mentioned in their report, when filing a complaint. To expedite the investigation into this matter, the Court also directed Officer in charge of the relevant Police Station provide a progress report on the investigation within two months from the date of this order.