The genuine order was mundane, a routine adjournment in a second appeal, giving newly-engaged counsel time to take instructions and requisitioning the trial court record. But a version surfaced with one extra line at the end: ‘interim stay granted.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has taken note of a fabricated version of one of its own orders, in which the words ‘interim stay granted’ were added to a genuine order, and has directed that the matter be investigated, while disposing of a writ petition concerning police inaction on a complaint of alleged property fraud [Smt. Meena Devi and Another v. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi) and Others].
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav passed the order.
The petition, and the two orders
The petitioners had approached the Court aggrieved by the alleged inaction of the police on their complaint alleging serious fraud and forgery said to have been committed to grab a property in the extended Lal Dora of a village in Delhi, which they claim belongs to them. In the course of arguments, their counsel drew the Court’s attention to an order stated to have been passed on November 19, 2024 in a regular second appeal, RSA 101/2024, pending before the High Court.
The Court then compared the order actually passed on that date with the version produced before it. The genuine order recorded that counsel for the respondents sought time to seek instructions, having been recently engaged, listed the matter for a later date, and directed that the trial court record be requisitioned. The version produced before the Court contained the identical text, with one addition at the end: a further line reading ‘interim stay granted.’
‘Some unknown person seems to have fabricated the order’
On comparing the two, the Court found the addition to be a fabrication. A bare perusal, it held, revealed that some unknown person seemed to have fabricated the order passed by the Court by adding the paragraph containing the words ‘interim stay granted’, and that this aspect required to be investigated and appropriate action taken.
The significance of the addition lies in what it purported to create. The genuine order granted no stay; the fabricated line manufactured an interim stay that the Court had never ordered, a document that, if used, could have been passed off as a subsisting order of the High Court restraining action in the underlying matter. The Court did not identify who was responsible, referring only to an unknown person, and left the question of responsibility to the investigation it directed.
The directions
The Court granted the petitioners liberty to approach the Registrar General of the High Court by a detailed representation, enclosing copies of both the genuine and the fabricated orders, and directed that if such a complaint were filed before the Registrar General, it be taken to its logical conclusion. In addition, it granted liberty to the petitioners to file a detailed representation to the Commissioner of Police, and directed the Commissioner to inquire into all aspects and take appropriate action in accordance with law within two months of receiving the representation.
With these observations and liberties, the Court disposed of the petition, leaving all the rights and contentions of the parties open.
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Why it matters
The fabrication of a court order strikes at something more than the parties to a single case. A judicial order carries the authority of the court, and a forged order, especially one manufacturing a stay, can be deployed to stall lawful action, deceive authorities, or defeat the rights of others, all under the false colour of the court’s own word. That is why the Court treated the discovery not merely as a matter between the litigants but as one calling for investigation in its own right, referring it both to the Registrar General, who administers the court’s records, and to the police, who can pursue the criminal dimension.
The mechanism the Court adopted reflects the two faces of the problem. Fabricating a court order can attract serious offences, forgery of a document, forgery for the purpose of cheating, and the use of a forged document as genuine, which are for the police to investigate and, if made out, to prosecute. At the same time, the tampering with what purports to be the court’s own record engages the administrative authority of the High Court through its Registrar General, who can verify the authenticity of the order against the court’s records and set in motion the appropriate internal action. By routing the matter to both, the Court ensured that neither track is left to chance.
It should be noted that the underlying dispute, the alleged property fraud, remains uninvestigated on its merits, and the Court expressed no view on it, leaving all contentions open and directing the police to look into the complaint. Nor did the Court fix responsibility for the fabrication, which it attributed to an unknown person, to be identified, if at all, through the investigation. What the order establishes, on the Court’s own comparison of the two documents, is that a fabricated order bearing a non-existent stay was in circulation, and that both the administrative and the criminal machinery have now been set in motion to trace its source and hold whoever is responsible to account.
Case Title: Smt. Meena Devi and Another v. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi) and Others [W.P.(Crl) 2913/2026]
Bench: Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, High Court of Delhi at New Delhi
Date of Order: September 18, 2026
Appearances: Advocates O.P. Agrawal, M.A. Khan and Aashish Pratap Singh for the petitioners; Additional Standing Counsel Anand V. Khatri for the State; Advocates V.P. Rana and Roopanshu Malik for Respondent No. 7.
Status: Petition disposed of. Fabrication of a High Court order (addition of ‘interim stay granted’) flagged for investigation; liberty to approach the Registrar General and the Commissioner of Police, who is to inquire and act within two months. Underlying property-fraud complaint left to be investigated; all contentions open.