New Delhi, Apr 3 A Delhi court has convicted a former sub-inspector for forging the signatures of senior police officers on chargesheets and filing them in court, and found her guilty of sending a threatening message to a senior officer.
Judicial Magistrate Saurabh Goyal said the police officer's action was "an attack upon the sanctity of judicial records.
In an order dated April 2, the judge said, "I hold that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused, SI Kavita Mathur, committed forgery of public documents, forged documents were used as genuine by her for the purpose of deceiving and influencing official processes…"
Mathur was posted as an SI at Palam village police station in 2015 when she forged the signatures of then Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) M Harsh Vardhan and the then station head Officer (SHO) Niyati Mittal Kashyap on several final reports and charge sheets relating to multiple FIRs, the prosecution said.
The court noted that the accused subsequently filed these documents before the court as genuine despite knowing that the signatures of the senior officers were forged.
“In the present case the combination of direct testimony from the purported signatories, independent corroboration by witnesses, the CFSL scientific report, the court record entries, and the accused’s demonstrated conduct point cogently to the accused’s culpability,” the magistrate said.
The court noted that the report from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory confirmed that the questioned signatures on the documents did not match the admitted signatures of the officers concerned.
The court said that the evidence established that the accused had custody of the case files in her capacity as investigating officer, giving her the opportunity to manipulate the documents.
“The defence offered no credible alternative explanation which could dispel the chain of incriminating circumstances. The cumulative effect of prosecution evidence leads to inference that the prosecution has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt,” the court said.
The prosecution also alleged that on July 23, 2015, Mathur sent a message from her mobile phone to ACP Harsh Vardhan stating that his FIR had ruined her career and that she would commit suicide.
The court held that the message was intended to create alarm and influence the officer to refrain from pursuing the complaint against her.
"When an accused files with a court a document which contains false signatures purporting to be of public functionaries, and when this is done by the accused in her official capacity as an IO, the offence moves beyond private deception to an attack upon the sanctity of judicial records," the magistrate said.
Mathur was accordingly convicted for forgery of public documents, using forged documents as genuine, cheating and criminal intimidation.
She was charged under Indian Penal Code sections 417 (punishment for cheating), 465 (punishment for forgery), 466 (forgery of record of court or public register), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using forged document as genuine), along with Section 506 Part-I for criminal intimidation.
The court then listed the matter for hearing arguments on the quantum of sentence for a later date.
