Karnataka High Court Refuses to Quash Forgery Case Against Police Sub-Inspector Over Birth Date

Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has refused to stop the criminal prosecution against Police Sub-Inspector Kashilingegowda S B, who is accused of altering entries in a vaccination register to show a different date of birth, holding that a civil court order correcting a date of birth does not by itself block a criminal investigation into alleged forgery in IPC. Justice Suraj Govindaraj rejected the plea for quashing Crime No. 118/2024 registered by the Vidhana Soudha Police under Sections 198, 420, 465, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code, and asked the police to finish the investigation at the earliest.

The case centres on the difference between getting a record corrected and facing questions about how that correction was obtained. According to the prosecution, the sub-inspector relied on vaccination register entries said to have been fabricated to support a claim for change of birth date. On that basis, the Vidhana Soudha police opened a case for suspected use of false documents and cheating. The officer then moved the High Court to close the case, pointing to a civil decree that had accepted his corrected date of birth. He argued that once a competent civil court had ruled on the date, no criminal case about the same underlying documents could survive.

The State opposed the plea. It maintained that a decree declaring a date of birth does not decide whether the papers used to get that decree were genuine. The question of forgery under IPC, the prosecution said, turns on whether a false document was made or used as genuine with dishonest intent, and that question can only be answered after statements are recorded, records are seized and forensic comparison, if needed, is done. Closing the investigation at the threshold, it argued, would prevent the police from testing the register, tracing its custody and examining who made the disputed entries.

How forgery in IPC was argued

The bench did not accept the argument that the civil decree ended the matter. Justice Govindaraj said the two proceedings operate in different fields. A civil court deciding a suit for correction looks at which date is proved on balance by the evidence placed before it. A criminal court examining a charge of forgery section in IPC looks at whether a record was falsely made, altered or used to cheat. One finding does not replace the other. Even if the corrected date itself is right, the Court said, the police are still entitled to ask whether false evidence was created to obtain it.

That distinction runs through the law on forgery definition IPC and forgery of documents IPC. Forgery is not only about taking someone else's property. It covers making a false document or part of a document with intent to cause damage, support a false claim or induce a public servant or any person to act on it. When the document is used to claim a longer tenure in service, allowances, pay fixation or pension, the allegation moves beyond a private dispute. For a uniformed officer, the Court indicated, the standard of scrutiny is higher because service records form the basis for recruitment, seniority and retirement.

The provisions cited in Crime No. 118/2024 reflect that spread. Section 198 deals with using as true a declaration known to be false. Section 420 deals with cheating and inducing delivery of property or altering a valuable security. Sections 465, 468 and 471 deal with forgery, forgery for the purpose of cheating and using a forged document as genuine. Read together, they frame the prosecution case as one where a register entry is said to have been falsely created and then put forward before authorities as proof of age. The reference to forgery section 463 IPC punishment, which defines the offence of forgery and sets the starting point for punishment for the later sections, helps explain why police invoked multiple sections for what is described as a single chain of acts.

Civil decree does not stop probe

Lawyers who handle service disputes will recognise the pattern. An employee first files a suit or representation to correct the birth date in service books, often relying on school records, birth extracts or medical registers. If the civil court grants the correction, the employee treats the issue as closed. The police case here asks a different question. It does not ask which birth date is correct in the abstract. It asks whether the vaccination register produced in support was tampered with, who had access to it and whether the disputed handwriting and ink match the surrounding entries. Those are matters of evidence that papers alone cannot settle without investigation, which is why the Court said the probe must go on.

The plea for fir quashing in High Court was tested against the settled limits on interference. The Court restated that quashing is allowed only where the complaint, taken at face value, discloses no offence, or where there is a clear legal bar. Disputed facts, rival versions about custody of a register and questions of intent cannot be decided on affidavits. Unlike a routine signature forgery case IPC section plea where the original document is available for direct comparison, age-correction cases often turn on old, fragile registers maintained by local health staff, with entries made by different hands over time. The bench said that complexity made investigation more, not less, necessary.