The CBI itself had twice concluded there was no case, and the originals were never found. The charge still stands
Sixteen years after the FIR, the Delhi High Court refuses to quash an order on charge over forged supply certificates — those weaknesses go to appreciation of evidence, not to whether a trial should happen.
The threshold for framing a charge is low by design, and the reason is that the alternative is worse. A court deciding whether to put an accused to trial is not deciding whether the prosecution will succeed, and if it tried to, it would be conducting the trial in advance on an incomplete record.
What makes that easy to state and hard to accept is a case like this one, where the investigating agency itself twice concluded there was nothing to prosecute.
On 22 September 2026 Justice Madhu Jain dismissed two connected petitions under Section 482 CrPC challenging an order on charge, and explained where the line sits.
Six flame photometers
The case arises from an FIR registered by the CBI on 1 April 2010 concerning a tender for the supply of six flame photometers under the Food and Drugs Capacity Building Project.
The allegation concerns performance certificates filed in that tender — documents claiming the supply of more than five flame photometers during a specified period, offered to establish the bidder’s track record. The prosecution case is that eight such certificates were forged.
The difficulties in proving it are set out at length in the judgment, because they form the whole of the petitioners’ case.
The original eight performance certificates were never produced. A hard disk was seized and forensically examined, but the examination could not conclusively establish what the petitioners were alleged to have done with the certificates. And witnesses who had been expected to make statements under Section 164 CrPC subsequently refused to do so.
Two closure reports
The most striking feature is the investigating agency’s own history in the matter.
In its first closure report the CBI recorded that it had not found material connecting the petitioners with the preparation of the performance certificates. The report also recorded that the eight certificates were shown as issued by the respective companies, and — a point the petitioners pressed hard — that the filing of original performance certificates was not mandatory under the terms and conditions of the tender.
That closure did not end the matter. The Magistrate declined to accept it and directed further investigation, identifying questions that remained open: whether the certificates had been filed for wrongful gain, what the position was regarding the original documents, and whether originals were required at all. The CBI submitted its final report on 15 September 2015, and cognizance was taken by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Rouse Avenue.
By an order on charge dated 13 February 2023, the trial court framed charges under Sections 120-B, 420 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code — criminal conspiracy, cheating, and using as genuine a document known to be forged. It discharged the petitioners in respect of Section 468.
What the Court held
The High Court listed the petitioners’ points and did not minimise any of them: the absence of the original documents, the inconclusive forensic opinion, the filing of closure reports by the investigating agency, and the refusal of certain witnesses to give statements under Section 164.
These, it held, are matters which may assume significance at the stage of appreciation of evidence. They do not, at this stage, render the prosecution case so inherently improbable or legally untenable as to warrant quashing.
The distinction is between the two questions a criminal case asks. Whether these documents were forged, whether anyone can prove it without the originals, and what weight a court should give an agency’s own view that there was no case — those are questions for the trial, answered after the evidence is led and tested. Whether there is material disclosing a prima facie case is a threshold question, answered on the record as it stands and without weighing probative value.
On that footing the Court found no illegality, perversity or abuse of the process of law in the order on charge. The material, considered at the threshold and without a detailed appreciation of its probative value, was sufficient to sustain the prima facie case for offences under Sections 120-B, 420 and 471 IPC.
The Court also declined to interfere with the discharge under Section 468, that finding not having been shown to suffer from any illegality — which is worth noting, because it shows the trial court had in fact sifted the charges rather than framing everything the charge-sheet proposed.
The order
Both petitions were dismissed along with the pending applications, and the trial court was directed to proceed with the trial without delay.
The Court twice confined the reach of what it had said. The observations are strictly limited to the question whether the material discloses sufficient ground for the criminal proceedings to continue, and are not an expression of opinion on the ultimate merits; nothing in the judgment is to be taken as an opinion on the merits of the case. A copy was directed to be sent to the trial court.
Those caveats matter more than they usually do. The petitioners go to trial carrying an order that says nothing about their guilt, on a case the CBI once closed, without the originals of the documents said to be forged, and with an inconclusive forensic report. Every one of those facts is available to them before the trial court, where they can be tested — and where, on this judgment, they belong.