A man’s daughter eloped. Then someone forged his name to frame a witness.

Bhagwan Singh’s daughter ran off with a man in 2013. Years later, the Supreme Court got a petition in his name—except he says he never filed it.

The petition asked the Court to overturn an order that had shut down a criminal case. The case was about kidnapping, abduction, and rape. The man named as the petitioner was Bhagwan Singh. The man targeted by the petition was Ajay Katara—the key prosecution witness in the famous Nitish Katara murder case. There was just one problem. Bhagwan Singh wrote to the Supreme Court and said: I never filed any case. I never hired any lawyer. That signature is not mine.

The letter arrived at the Court registry like a stone dropped into still water. It was a simple handwritten note, but it unravelled an entire edifice of forged documents, complicit advocates, and a decade-old family feud weaponised through the legal system. The Court had to ask: if the man whose name was on the petition did not file it, who did—and why?

When the daughter eloped

In June 2013, Bhagwan Singh's daughter Rinki left home. She eloped and married a man named Sukhpal Singh. Bhagwan Singh went to the police. An FIR (a written complaint that starts a police investigation) was registered at Police Station Sehaswan in District Budaun, Uttar Pradesh. The FIR accused someone of kidnapping Rinki under Sections 363 and 366 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)—the laws that punish kidnapping and abducting a woman to force her into marriage.

The police investigated. By December 2013, the investigating officer filed a supplementary chargesheet (a final report saying no case exists against a particular person) clearing one man: Ajay Katara. He was not involved, the police said. The case against him was closed. The file sat in a dusty courtroom, the pages yellowing, the matter seemingly over.

The chargesheet that came back

Five years later, something changed. In December 2018, a fresh supplementary chargesheet was filed in the court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate-II in Budaun. This one named Ajay Katara as an accused under Sections 363, 366, and 376 IPC (the law punishing rape). How did a man cleared in 2013 become accused in 2018? The record does not say. But Ajay Katara fought back.

He went to the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad and filed a petition under Section 482 of the CrPC (the High Court's inherent power to quash a case that is an abuse of process). In December 2019, the High Court agreed. It quashed the entire proceedings against Ajay Katara. The case was dead—or so it seemed.

Then someone tried to resurrect it. Not through fresh evidence or a new complaint, but through a forged name and a chain of lawyers who looked the other way.

The forged petition that reached the Supreme Court

In 2024, a set of Special Leave Petitions (SLPs—appeals to the Supreme Court against a High Court order) arrived at the Supreme Court registry. The petitioner named was Bhagwan Singh. The petitions challenged the High Court's 2019 quashing order and also a 2024 order that had rejected a recall application (a request to reopen a decided case). The vakalatnama (the legal document that authorises a lawyer to represent a client) carried what looked like Bhagwan Singh's signature—a shaky, uncertain scrawl in blue ink, as if someone had practised it a few times before committing it to paper. An Advocate-on-Record (AOR—a lawyer registered with the Supreme Court who can file cases) had certified that the signature was made in his presence. A notary had stamped it, the seal pressed into the page without a single witness present to verify the deponent's identity.

The documents moved through the system with the quiet efficiency of routine. Court clerks stamped them. Registry officials numbered them. A bench was assigned. But then, Bhagwan Singh himself wrote a letter to the Supreme Court. He said he had never filed any SLP. He had never met any lawyer. He had never signed any document. The Court took the letter seriously. It ordered an inquiry.

The courtroom fell silent as the facts emerged. The file felt thin—too thin for a case that had travelled from a police station in Budaun to the highest court in the land. The smell of old paper mixed with the tension of a bench that was about to discover a fraud.

What the inquiry found

The inquiry revealed a chain of fraud. Bhagwan Singh's daughter Rinki and her husband Sukhpal—the same man she had eloped with in 2013—had orchestrated the entire thing. With the help of multiple advocates, they had forged Bhagwan Singh's signature on the vakalatnama and other court documents. They had filed false proceedings without his knowledge or consent.

The AOR admitted that he had attested the signature without the petitioner being present before him. He told the court he had not seen Bhagwan Singh, only a photocopy of an Aadhaar card. The notary admitted that he had notarised documents without the deponent (the person making the statement) being present—a clear violation of the Notaries Act, 1952 and the Notaries Rules, 1956. A chain of advocates had passed fabricated documents to each other, each adding a layer of apparent legitimacy to a completely fake case. One advocate handed it to another, who handed it to another, until the forged vakalatnama reached the AOR who filed it with the Court.

The Supreme Court called it a "brazen attempt to abuse the process of law." The target was clear: Ajay Katara. The goal was to drag him back into a criminal case that had been closed twice—once by the police and once by the High Court. The Court noted that the entire proceeding was orchestrated without Bhagwan Singh's knowledge, and that the fraud was designed to use the Supreme Court's own machinery to harass a witness.

Why the Court ordered a CBI probe

The bench—Justice Bela M. Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma—did not stop at calling out the fraud. It found that the conduct amounted to fraud on the court itself. When proceedings are filed using forged documents and fabricated signatures, without the knowledge of the person in whose name they are filed, the court's own process has been weaponised.

The Court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to register a regular case after holding a preliminary inquiry if necessary. The CBI was told to investigate all links leading to the commission of the alleged crimes and the fraud on the court. The Director of the CBI was ordered to submit a report within two months. The original records of the case—the forged vakalatnama, the notary stamps, the chain of correspondence—were handed over to the CBI in a sealed cover. The Court listed the matter for a report on November 25, 2024.

The Court also sent a copy of its order to the Bar Council of India and the Government of India. It issued directions on how Advocates-on-Record must mark appearances—only of those advocates who are actually authorised to appear and argue on a particular day. If the arguing advocate changes, the AOR must inform the Court Master in advance. This was not just a punishment for the fraud; it was a systemic fix to prevent similar abuses in the future.

What the judgment means for lawyers and litigants

The judgment is a warning shot across the legal profession. An AOR who certifies a signature without the client being present commits a serious breach of professional duty under Order IV Rule 7 of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 (the rule that governs how vakalatnamas must be executed). A notary who stamps documents without the deponent present violates the Notaries Act, 1952 and the Notaries Rules, 1956. And any advocate who passes fabricated documents up the chain is participating in a fraud on the court.

The Court also invoked the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023—the new criminal code that consolidates offences related to forgery and fraud. The CBI investigation will examine whether the forgers, the advocates, and the notary have committed offences under this new law, which carries severe penalties for document forgery and criminal conspiracy.

THE PLAY: Every lawyer who touches a vakalatnama—from the notary to the AOR—must verify the client's identity and presence in person, or risk being investigated for criminal conspiracy and professional misconduct.

The Court also cited three precedents: V. Chandrasekaran & Anr. v. Administrative Officer & Ors. (2012), Mahendra Chawla v. Union of India (2019), and Saumya Chaurasia v. Directorate of Enforcement (2024)—all of which establish that fraud on the court is a serious offence that justifies the highest level of investigation. These cases collectively hold that when the court's process is abused through forgery and deception, the court must not only undo the fraud but also ensure that those responsible are held accountable through a thorough investigation.

The case was disposed of. The CBI has its orders. The matter is listed for a report on November 25, 2024. The forged vakalatnama sits in a sealed cover now, its shaky signature a testament to a fraud that almost succeeded.

Bhagwan Singh's daughter eloped in 2013. A decade later, someone tried to use his name to settle a score. The Supreme Court caught it—and sent the file to the CBI.