A man said he never filed a case. The Supreme Court found his daughter and son-in-law forged it.

Bhagwan Singh's daughter eloped in 2013. Years later, someone filed a Supreme Court case in his name—without his knowledge. He wrote to the judges: 'I never filed this.'

That letter landed on a Supreme Court bench in September 2024. What it revealed was not a simple case of mistaken identity. It was a carefully constructed fraud—forged signatures, complicit lawyers, a notary who never saw the man whose thumbprint he certified—all aimed at dragging a man back into a criminal trial that had been legally dead for five years.

When a father filed a case he never knew about

In June 2013, Bhagwan Singh walked into a police station in Sehaswan, District Budaun, Uttar Pradesh. His daughter Rinki had eloped. He filed an FIR (a written complaint that starts a police investigation) for kidnapping. The police traced Rinki to Sukhpal Singh—the man she had married. The case was straightforward: a father's anger at an elopement, a daughter's choice, a legal system grinding through its gears.

Then something strange happened. Five years later, in December 2018, a supplementary chargesheet was filed. It added a new name: Ajay Katara. He was charged under Section 376 IPC (rape). Ajay Katara was no ordinary accused. He was a key prosecution witness in the Nitish Katara murder case—a high-profile crime that had gripped Delhi's courts for years. How a witness in a murder trial in Delhi ended up charged with rape in a small-town elopement case in Budaun was never explained in the record. But the charge stuck.

Ajay Katara fought back. In December 2019, he approached the Allahabad High Court under Section 482 CrPC (the High Court's power to shut down a case that should never have been filed). The High Court agreed. It quashed the proceedings—the rape charge against Katara was dead. The order was clear: the case against him could not proceed.

For four years, nothing happened. Then, in 2024, two Special Leave Petitions (SLPs—appeals to the Supreme Court against a High Court order) were filed in Bhagwan Singh's name. They challenged the 2019 quashing order and asked the Supreme Court to revive the rape case against Ajay Katara.

There was only one problem. Bhagwan Singh had no idea any of this was happening.

The letter that unravelled everything

Bhagwan Singh wrote directly to the Supreme Court. His words were simple: he had never authorised anyone to file an appeal. He had never signed any vakalatnama (the legal document that appoints a lawyer to represent a client). He had never met any of the advocates whose names appeared on the petition. The entire case was a fiction built around his name.

The bench—Justice Bela M. Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma—did not dismiss the letter as a crank complaint. They ordered an investigation. What they found was a web of forgery that involved not just Bhagwan Singh's daughter and son-in-law, but also multiple advocates and a notary public.

The vakalatnama filed with the Supreme Court bore a signature that Bhagwan Singh said was not his. The Advocate-on-Record (AOR—the lawyer who must certify that the client personally appeared and signed the document) had attested the signature without ever seeing Bhagwan Singh. The notary had notarised the affidavit without the deponent being present. The entire paper trail was a fabrication, and every professional whose name appeared on it had either looked the other way or actively participated.

Who orchestrated the fraud

The investigation pointed to two people: Sukhpal Singh—the man Rinki had eloped with in 2013—and Rinki herself. They were respondent nos. 3 and 4 in the Supreme Court proceedings. They had filed the SLPs in Bhagwan Singh's name without his knowledge. Why? To drag Ajay Katara back into a criminal case that had been quashed. The motive was never explicitly stated in the judgment, but the pattern was clear: use a father's name to reopen a case against a man someone wanted to see punished.

The court found that the fraud was not a one-person operation. Multiple advocates had assisted in filing the forged documents. The notary had certified documents without the petitioner present. The AOR had attested identification without meeting the person he was supposed to represent. Each of these professionals had a duty—under the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, the Notaries Act, 1952, and the Bar Council of India Rules—to verify that the person whose name appeared on the document was actually the person signing it. Every single one of them failed.

What the Supreme Court said about fraud on the court

The bench did not mince words. Filing court proceedings in someone else's name without their knowledge, using forged documents and fake signatures, is not just a procedural irregularity. It is fraud on the court—an abuse of the judicial process that strikes at the foundation of the legal system.

The court held that an Advocate-on-Record who certifies a client's signature without the client being personally present commits professional misconduct. A notary who notarises documents without the deponent appearing before him commits misconduct under the Notaries Act and Notaries Rules. Both actions facilitate fraud and make the professionals who perform them complicit.

The bench cited three precedents: Mahendra Chawla v. Union of India, V. Chandrasekaran v. Administrative Officer, and Saumya Chaurasia v. Directorate of Enforcement. All three stand for the same principle: when the court's process is abused through forgery and fabrication, the court must act decisively to protect its own integrity.

The order: CBI investigation and professional consequences

The Supreme Court disposed of the SLPs—the appeals were dead. The quashing order from the Allahabad High Court stood. Ajay Katara remained free of the rape charge.

But the court did not stop there. It directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to register a regular case against every person found involved in the fraud. The CBI was told to investigate all links leading to the commission of the alleged crimes and the fraud on the court, and to submit a report within two months. The original records of the Supreme Court proceedings were handed over to the CBI in a sealed cover.

The court also sent copies of its order to the Bar Council of India and the Government of India for necessary action. The advocates who had facilitated the fraud faced potential disbarment. The notary faced removal from office. The message was clear: the court would not tolerate professionals who treated their duties as rubber stamps.

THE PLAY: Every advocate and notary who signs a vakalatnama or notarises an affidavit must personally verify the identity and presence of the person whose signature they are certifying—failure to do so is professional misconduct that can lead to disbarment and criminal prosecution.

Why this case matters beyond the parties

For practitioners, this judgment is a warning. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the duty to verify a client's identity is not a formality. It is a legal obligation. An AOR who certifies a signature without seeing the client, a notary who notarises without the deponent present, an advocate who files documents without confirming the client's instructions—each of them is now on notice. The court will not accept "I didn't know" as a defence.

For the legal system, this case exposes a vulnerability. If a man can have a Supreme Court case filed in his name without his knowledge, using forged documents that pass through multiple layers of professional certification, then the system's safeguards are only as strong as the professionals who operate them. The CBI investigation will determine whether this was a one-time fraud or a pattern that extends beyond Budaun.

Bhagwan Singh's letter to the Supreme Court was a single page. It brought down a house of cards built by his own daughter and son-in-law, with help from people who should have known better. The court ended where it began: with a father who never wanted to file a case, and a system that almost let him.