She gave her mother's date of death as the 21st when it was the 20th, and that put her in a criminal court for two years
Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran quashed the prosecution, holding that a certificate issued by the competent authority cannot be a forgery and that a wrong date, corrected and never used for gain, makes out no offence.
A woman in Muzaffarnagar applied online for her late mother's death certificate. She was not, on her own account, technically savvy, so she made the application through a Jan Sewa Kendra — one of the common service centres that exist precisely so that people who cannot navigate a government portal can still obtain the documents they are entitled to. The certificate issued, from the competent authority under the Panchayati Raj Vibhag of the Government of Uttar Pradesh. It recorded the date of death as 21 November 2019. The death had in fact occurred on 20 November 2019.
That one-day discrepancy produced a First Information Report, an investigation, a charge-sheet, an order taking cognizance, and a criminal case pending before an Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate from 2024 until the Supreme Court ended it on 12 October 2026.
How a date became a crime
The complaint did not come from anyone with an interest in the estate, or from any authority that had been misled. It came from a man named in the judgment as Sanjay Kumar, described as a person unknown to the appellant and not connected to her family, who complained that the death had actually occurred on 20 November 2019.
On that complaint the District Panchayat Raj Officer, Muzaffarnagar, enquired and found that the date furnished by the appellant was wrong. He is said to have initiated an investigation by way of an FIR, registered as Crime No. 94 of 2024 at Police Station Chhapar. A charge-sheet followed. Cognizance was taken by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate-I, Muzaffarnagar, and the case proceeded as Case No. 16720 of 2024. The allegation, as the Court recorded it, was that the appellant had deliberately given false information and forged her mother's death certificate.
The appellant's explanation went to how the information had reached her and why the complaint had been made at all. She had disputes with her sister and civil suits were pending between them; a settlement had been arrived at, and despite that, she said, the sister had instigated the filing of the complaint. On the substance, her case was that it was her sister who had informed her of their mother's death, and that she had made the application in the bona fide belief that the date she gave was the correct one.
Who issued the certificate
The Court's first answer disposes of the forgery allegation on a point that is almost definitional, and it begins from an admitted fact. The certificate was issued by the competent authority of the Panchayati Raj Vibhag. It is, in other words, a genuine document made by the officer empowered to make it, recording what he was told.
On that footing, the Court held, there cannot be found any forgery or criminal breach of trust in the issuance of the certificate. That the wrong date was furnished cannot lead to an allegation of an offence under Section 420 or Section 465 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
The distinction matters beyond this case. Section 465 punishes forgery, which requires the making of a false document — not the supplying of inaccurate information to an official who then makes a true record of his own. Section 420 punishes cheating with delivery of property, which requires deception and a resulting wrongful loss or gain. Neither description fits a citizen who applies for a certificate she is entitled to and gets the date wrong by a day.
Corrected, and never used
The Court gave two further reasons, each independent of the first.
The date of death was corrected. Whatever the register had said, the record no longer carries the error that the prosecution was built on.
And there was no allegation against the appellant that she used the death certificate to get any benefits. That absence is what hollows out the cheating charge: the offence is not committed by stating something untrue, but by using the untruth to obtain something. Nothing of the kind was alleged.
Finally the Court allowed for the obvious human possibility, in a sentence that reads as an answer to the word “deliberately” in the allegation. The date could also be a mistake, since the actual death was on 20 November 2019 and the date furnished by the appellant was 21 November 2019.
“No useful purpose”
The conclusion follows shortly. The Court was of the opinion that no useful purpose would be served in continuing the prosecution, and quashed the proceedings in Case No. 16720 of 2024, arising from Crime No. 94 of 2024, pending before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court-I, Muzaffarnagar. The appeal was allowed and pending applications rejected.
It is a four-page order, and it is marked non-reportable. What it disposes of is nonetheless worth noticing: an online application made through a common service centre, a one-day error, a complaint by a stranger, and a prosecution under two sections of the Penal Code that the facts could not support, which survived an enquiry, an FIR, a charge-sheet and the taking of cognizance before any court looked at whether an offence had been made out at all.