Nobody says they forged anything, so the forgery charges go — but the conspiracy charge stays
Discharged in 2020, recharged on the CBI’s revision in 2022, two directors of a steel company reach the High Court on a 1998 case. Twenty-eight years on, it separates what each of them is actually alleged to have done.
A charge of criminal conspiracy to obtain finance by using forged documents, and a charge of forging those documents yourself, are different things. On 24 September 2026, in Rita Singh and Anr. v. Central Bureau of Investigation, Justice Madhu Jain of the Delhi High Court held that the material against two directors supported the first and not the second, and split the charges accordingly.
A cheque that never reached Calcutta
The CBI registered the case in August 1998 under Section 120B IPC read with Sections 420, 467, 468, 471 and 477A. The accused included the late Chairman of Mideast Integrated Steels Ltd, the first petitioner who was its Managing Director, the second who was a director, and other officers of the company. A charge-sheet followed in July 2000.
The part of the prosecution case relevant here concerns lease finance of about Rs 2 crore sought by the company from Ashok Leyland Finance Ltd. The CBI alleges the finance was obtained by representing that the company had acquired equipment it had not.
On the documents submitted to it, the financier sanctioned Rs 1,90,18,501. After adjusting a stated advance, a cheque for Rs 1,68,41,547 was issued in March 1996 in favour of Kesoram Refractories.
That cheque, on the prosecution case, never reached Kesoram Refractories at Calcutta. It was deposited instead into a current account opened at a bank in Defence Colony, New Delhi in the name of “Kesoram Refractories”, with a co-accused shown as its proprietor — a concern the CBI alleges was fictitious.
Discharged, then recharged
At the stage of charge the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate discharged both petitioners, and one other accused, in September 2020. The material relied on against them, the Magistrate noted, consisted principally of their positions in the companies concerned, a statement about certain discussions, and the subsequent movement of funds to group entities.
The CBI took that in revision. In August 2022 the Principal District and Sessions Judge allowed the revision and set the discharge aside. Charges were framed in November 2022 under Section 120B read with Sections 420, 467, 468 and 471 IPC, and under the substantive offences.
The petition under Section 482 challenged both the revisional judgment and the order framing charges. Ms. Rebecca John, Senior Advocate, appeared for the petitioners.
Between the discharge and the High Court's judgment, the case had been running for twenty-four years from registration and twenty-two from the charge-sheet, without a trial on the merits having begun.
Four questions
The Court identified four issues: the effect of an earlier judgment of December 2021 in a separate CBI case; whether the material sufficed at the stage of charge to proceed for conspiracy and cheating; whether the substantive charges of forgery and using forged documents could independently be sustained; and the effect of a settlement the petitioners relied on.
On the first, the judgment holds that the earlier acquittal does not bar this prosecution under Article 20(2) of the Constitution or Section 300 of the Code, because the two proceedings arise out of distinct transactions. It adds a qualification that matters: any issue of fact directly and finally decided in the earlier trial cannot be reopened while that judgment remains operative — subject to the outcome of a pending leave petition against it.
On the settlement, the Court held it was itself incapable of independent verification from the financial institution concerned, and that having regard to the nature of the allegations it did not furnish sufficient ground for quashing the prosecution.
Who is alleged to have made the documents
The decisive point is narrow and entirely evidential.
The charge-sheet attributes the submission of the proforma invoice and the receipt to a different co-accused. No material was shown to the Court attributing the physical preparation, alteration, execution or making of any of the disputed documents to either petitioner.
Their alleged participation in a conspiracy to secure finance by the use of such documents stands, the judgment holds, on a different footing — and is already covered by the charge under Section 120B read with the corresponding substantive offences. Conspiring to use a forged document is not the same as forging it, and the charge-sheet named somebody else for the making.
The Court did reject one of the petitioners’ arguments in the broad form in which it was put: that Section 467 can have no application because the documents are not a “valuable security”. That proposition was not accepted as stated.
The split
The material was held sufficient to sustain the charge of conspiracy under Section 120B read with Sections 420, 467, 468 and 471 IPC, and the substantive charge under Section 420 called for no interference.
But with no specific material showing that either petitioner herself made or altered any of the alleged forged documents, or used any such document as genuine, the substantive charges under Sections 467, 468 and 471 against them were set aside.
The petition was partly allowed to that extent, with the trial court to proceed in accordance with law and uninfluenced by any observation on merits. The interim orders stand vacated.
The practical reading is about how a charge-sheet is drafted rather than about these two directors. Where an agency names one accused as the person who prepared or submitted a document, it cannot carry the substantive forgery charge across to every other accused on the strength of their office in the company. The conspiracy charge is the one that does that work, and it survived here precisely because it is the charge that fits the allegation actually made.