New Delhi: Justice Gautam Patel of the Bombay High Court has ordered a probe and a criminal case, if necessary, into a forged court order made in his name.
The order was passed after two lawyers, Umesh Vasant Mohite and Hetal Arvind Pandya, lodged a handwritten complaint with the court.
Justice Patel took note of the complaint at 2 pm Saturday and issued his order at the earliest.
The forged order pertained to a claim for two bank deposits worth Rs 51 lakh, and created rights in favour of a person, one Satishchandra Garodia, who passed away 15 days ago. The order was brought to the complainants’ attention by Garodia’s grand-nephew, one Parth Garodia.
According to Patel’s Saturday order, Parth claimed to have got hold of the document from his father, who in turn claimed to have received it from an “advocate”, Ashok Vageriya. On enquiry, the court did not find any lawyer with that name registered in its records.
Mohite and Pandya were looking into a succession petition filed by Parth, who had sought access to Garodia’s estate. The forged order was part of this succession petition.
After being unable to get the case details from the court website and the judge’s chamber, the two lawyers approached Justice Patel Saturday, 15 February.
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A Sunday order
The forged order was dated 1 December 2019. It was a Sunday and Justice Patel was not working.
In his order, Justice Patel has pointed out several such discrepancies in the forged order. For instance, he noted that the document said it was issued in the HC’s Ordinary Original Civil Jurisdiction “In Its Revenue and Property Division”, while there exists no such division.
“The entire formatting of the documents, including the fonts, the line spacing etc, is not in the manner in which I make my orders. There is no footer of the date and page number which is my invariable practice for the last several years,” he said.
The judge then concluded, “There is no manner of doubt that the entire document is not only a forgery but a clumsy one.”
After perusing the order, Justice Patel suspected that the forgery could have been made using a computer terminal in the courtroom, as he pointed out that the physical copy of the document before it did not have a date and time stamp.
He explained, “When a previously uploaded order is accessed from a terminal in a Court Room, the watermark is visible but the date and time stamp is not. It may therefore be possible that the entire document was fabricated using some Court Room terminal. This needs to be investigated.”
Calling it “disturbing”, Patel said the order was “evidently sought to be used in respect of two term deposits” from banks.
He ordered the Registrar (Legal & Research) to take appropriate action under the Code of Criminal Procedure against unidentified persons, and also directed the Indian Bank and the Bank of Baroda to freeze the term deposits.
Additionally, the court has also summoned Parth Garodia and Ashok Vageriya before it, seeking an explanation.
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