High Court ordered action against the lawyer who made fake bail order

New Delhi: Allegations of forgery have surfaced against a lawyer appointed to assist undertrial prisoners in the Delhi High Court. The lawyer has allegedly created and circulated a fake bail order, which was allegedly never issued by the High Court.

After this incident came to light, the High Court has ordered to register a police complaint for a thorough investigation of the matter. Justice Swarn Kanta Sharma initiated the case by taking suo motu cognizance after receiving information about the incident. The court was told that the lawyer prepared a fake bail order for a woman accused, which she handed over to her mother during a visit in jail.

The Court expressed surprise and concern at the incident, and stressed the seriousness of judicial document forging and its impact on the integrity of the legal system. To address this grave breach of trust and potential criminal act, the court has directed its Registrar General to lodge a complaint with the police for immediate investigation. The existence of the forged document came to light when the prisoner’s mother Saira Banu approached the High Court seeking clarity on the status of her daughter’s bail plea.

The document in question falsely claimed that the petition for bail was accepted in the High Court on 18 November 2023 which raised immediate suspicion as the court does not work on weekends.
Further investigation revealed that no record of such bail application was ever filed or reserved for the order, confirming the fraudulent nature of the document.
Now the High Court has taken important steps to prevent such incidents in future. It has issued procedures to verify the authenticity of its orders and judgments, emphasizing the use of QR codes, digital signatures and official emblems on documents obtained from the Delhi High Court website.

The Court has made it clear that authentic documents can be obtained freely and without cost, providing individuals with a reliable means of verifying the validity of judicial orders. Apart from ordering a police investigation, Justice Sharma appointed lawyer Harsh Prabhakar as amicus curiae to assist the affected prisoner in ensuring that he gets proper legal representation.
The court has taken active steps to educate the public and prisoners about the verification of court documents, including translating its order into Hindi and disseminating it widely.