The judgment does not decide that any person committed forgery: the trial court found the agreement and the receipt 'probably forged and fabricated', and the High Court held only that the plaintiffs failed to prove them. No prosecution was ordered; the parties were left to apply to the trial court under Section 340 of the CrPC. The eSCR search index lists the decision date as 9 November 2026 while the judgment itself states it was pronounced on 10 November 2026, and its cause-title page heads the date as Tuesday, 11 November 2026; this article follows the pronouncement date stated in the judgment.
- Case
- Ramineni Eswara Rao v. Nanapaneni Suresh
- Court
- High Court of Andhra Pradesh
- Decision
- Bench
- D. Ramesh; Alapati Giridhar
- Judgment by
- Alapati Giridhar
- Case numbers
- A.S. No. 555 of 2010
- Outcome
- Appeal dismissed with costs, affirming the trial court's dismissal of the specific-performance suit. The court did not order any prosecution; it left the parties to apply to the trial court under Section 340 of the CrPC.
Appeal dismissed; the buyers could not prove the documents
The Andhra Pradesh High Court has dismissed an appeal seeking specific performance of an alleged agreement to sell 2.74 acres in Guntur district, holding that the buyers could not prove the agreement or the receipt on which their claim rested. A Division Bench of Justices D. Ramesh and Alapati Giridhar affirmed the dismissal and dismissed Appeal Suit No. 555 of 2010 with costs.
The judgment, delivered by Justice Alapati Giridhar on 10 November 2026, also sets out the law: forging a sale agreement, gift deed, mortgage deed or similar document can attract life imprisonment, or imprisonment of up to ten years with a fine, under Section 467 of the Indian Penal Code (Section 338 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023).
The claimed deal: Rs 20 lakh an acre, then a mortgage discovered
The plaintiffs, Ramineni Eswara Rao and Karumanchi Bapaiah Chowdary, said the defendant, Nanapaneni Suresh, had agreed to sell them 2.74 acres of his ancestral land in Guntur Mandal for Rs 20 lakh per acre — a total of Rs 54.80 lakh. They said he executed an agreement of sale, receiving Rs 20 lakh in advance, and later, on 11 March 2006, accepted a further Rs 15 lakh and signed a receipt. The balance was to be paid within 12 months, with interest at 18 per cent a year on delay, and the defendant was to have the land measured, obtain an encumbrance certificate and execute a registered sale deed.
When they pressed the defendant to perform in 2006 and 2007, he stalled and demanded a further Rs 20 lakh, and in September 2007 they learnt from an encumbrance certificate that the land had been mortgaged to a financier, Kanneganti Subba Rao, in 1997. They issued a legal notice on 8 September 2007 asking him to clear the mortgage and complete the sale, and sued for specific performance when he did not. The I Additional District Judge, Guntur, dismissed the suit by a common judgment dated 31 May 2010.
The defence: blank-signed papers from a 1997 mortgage
The defendant denied that he had ever agreed to sell the land. His case was that in September 1997, needing money, he had borrowed Rs 2 lakh from Subba Rao and executed a registered mortgage deed for Rs 2.5 lakh, handing over his pattadar passbook and title deed. Subba Rao, he said, had taken his signatures on blank cheques, promissory notes, non-judicial stamp papers and white papers as security, and he had paid Rs 45,000 towards the debt.
The defendant said Subba Rao later used those blank-signed stamp papers to fabricate the agreement of sale and the receipt in the plaintiffs' names, and that the plaintiffs — whom he described as strangers to him — had filed a false suit at Subba Rao's instance after the land's value had risen sharply. A cheque for Rs 1,50,000 was dishonoured, leading to a cheque-dishonour case, and the defendant ultimately deposited Rs 1,50,000 as directed by the High Court.
What the trial court found, and the point the High Court framed
The trial court found inconsistencies in the plaintiffs' evidence about when they approached the defendant and when and where the agreement was executed, and noted that the mortgage deed of 1997 and the agreement of sale, supposedly executed more than seven years later, were written on non-judicial stamp papers bearing the same sequence of serial numbers. On that and other material, the trial court held that the agreement and the receipt were probably forged and fabricated, dismissed the suit with costs, and refused the plaintiffs a refund of the Rs 35 lakh they claimed to have paid.
The High Court framed a single point: whether the plaintiffs could prove the agreement of sale (Ex. A1) and the receipt (Ex. A2) and, if so, whether they had always been ready and willing to pay the balance consideration.
The High Court's reasoning: a chain of small improbabilities
The High Court found the plaintiffs' case materially inconsistent. The two plaintiffs gave different accounts of how long they had known the defendant before the deal — one month, twenty days, and two to three months of negotiations — and of where the agreement was executed, a place first mentioned only in cross-examination; the witnesses contradicted each other on whether the defendant had the agreement typed or had it brought to his house. One plaintiff said the price was Rs 20 lakh per acre; the attesting witness said Rs 25 lakh.
One plaintiff admitted paying Rs 20 lakh to a man he had known for a month without taking an encumbrance certificate or verifying the title, and without reading the agreement before paying. The agreement was written on stamp papers more than seven years old, and the receipt was a separate document rather than an endorsement on the agreement, as is usual. Although the agreement and the receipt were said to have been typed nine months apart, the ink in both appeared to be of the same colour and thickness, suggesting they had been typed at one sitting. The plaintiffs also never impleaded Subba Rao, though they had received the caveat he had filed against them.
The law on forgery of valuable securities
The court then set out the law. Section 463 of the IPC defines forgery; Section 464 explains what amounts to making a false document; and Section 467 provides that whoever forges a document that purports to be a valuable security — including an agreement, sale or gift deed, mortgage deed or negotiable instrument — shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for up to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine. The corresponding BNS provisions are Sections 336(1), 335 and 338.
The court noted that giving or fabricating false evidence, including filing a forged document and making a false statement, can attract up to seven years' imprisonment under Section 193 of the IPC. Its earlier decision in Thota Gopal and Pandipati Gopal Reddy (2026 APHC 44856) had dealt with the procedure for a prosecution under Section 467, following the Supreme Court in Pritish v. State of Maharashtra: the stage under Section 340 of the Code of Criminal Procedure only asks whether a criminal-court inquiry is expedient in the interest of justice, and does not decide guilt. Here, the court held that the parties had not shown enough material for it to proceed suo motu, and left them to apply to the trial court under Section 340.
BANTHRY ANALYSISFor law students
The case shows how courts test a document's genuineness: not by one decisive fact, but by a chain of small improbabilities — stamp papers from a 1997 mortgage reappearing on a 2005 agreement, witnesses contradicting each other on the place and the price, a buyer paying Rs 20 lakh without checking the title, and two documents typed nine months apart in identical ink. Any one of these might be explained away; together, they left the plaintiffs' case unproved.
Note what the court did not do. It did not hold that any named person had committed forgery, and it ordered no prosecution. A civil court's finding that a document is 'probably forged' decides the suit; whether a crime was committed is for a criminal court, reached through a Section 340 application. That is why the judgment spends a full section on Sections 463, 464 and 467 — to show the parties the criminal law that could follow, while leaving the decision to initiate it to the trial court.
READING PROMPTSQuestions for a closer reading
- The trial court found the agreement and the receipt 'probably forged and fabricated'. Why did the High Court's dismissal of the appeal not amount to a finding that anyone had committed forgery?
- What features of the evidence did the court treat as showing that the agreement and the receipt were not proved — and which of them concerned the stamp papers?
- Under Section 467 of the IPC, what punishment can follow for forging a sale agreement or mortgage deed, and what route did the court leave open for any prosecution?
