Rajasthan High Court quashes FIR against private university chairman in fake marksheets case

Jaipur: The Rajasthan High Court has quashed an FIR registered in 2014 against the Chairman and Vice Chancellor of Jodhpur National University in the alleged fake marksheets racket run through the institution, holding that the investigation failed to disclose any prima facie material connecting him to the alleged conspiracy and that allowing the eleven-year-old prosecution to continue would amount to an abuse of the process of the Court.

Justice Chandra Prakash Shrimali, exercising inherent powers under Section 482 CrPC, observed that the petitioner’s name did not figure in the FIR, that no fake marksheet or forged document had been recovered from his possession, and that the entirety of the fees collected from private candidates had been deposited in the accounts of the university rather than in any personal account of the petitioner — leaving the essential ingredients of cheating under Section 420 IPC, forgery under Sections 467 and 468 IPC, and criminal conspiracy under Section 120B IPC unsatisfied on the face of the record.

Reproducing the Supreme Court’s exposition in Rajiv Kumar v State of U.P., the Court noted:

“The essential ingredients of the offence of criminal conspiracy are: (i) an agreement between two or more persons; (ii) the agreement must relate to doing or causing to be done either (a) an illegal act; or (b) an act which is not illegal in itself but is done by illegal means. It is, therefore, plain that meeting of minds of two or more persons for doing or causing to be done an illegal act or an act by illegal means is sine qua non of criminal conspiracy.”

The petition under Section 482 CrPC had been filed by Kamal Mehta, a Chartered Accountant by profession and the Chairman and Vice Chancellor of Jodhpur National University — an institution established under the Kushal Educational Trust constituted under the Rajasthan Public Trusts Act, 1959. He sought quashing of FIR No. 15/2014 registered at Police Station SOG, CID, Jaipur, and the resultant proceedings in Case No. 915/2018 pending before the Additional Senior Civil Judge cum Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate No. 1, Jaipur, under Sections 420, 467, 468 and 120B IPC.

The FIR had been registered on 17 December 2014 on the complaint of Shyam Singh, the then Sub-Inspector with the Anti-Terrorist Squad, Udaipur, who alleged that during a separate operation in Jhansi he had arrested one Ashok Saran and others for impersonating in examinations. Saran was said to have disclosed during interrogation that he was the “mastermind” of a racket in which one Shyam Singh Meena — running a college named “Micro” at Chittorgarh — facilitated the issuance of backdated marksheets of Jodhpur National University to candidates who had never sat for any examination. Marksheets in the names of Ashok Saran, Chainaram, Nirmala Kumari and Balaram for BA and MA programmes between 2011 and 2014 were specifically referenced.

Appearing for the petitioner, Mr. Jitendra Mitruka with Mr. Rajesh Kala submitted that the FIR did not name the petitioner, that no person had lodged any complaint accusing him of furnishing forged marksheets or of receiving any consideration in exchange, and that the chain of allegations did not even prima facie disclose any role attributable to him. Counsel argued that approximately Rs. 16.42 crore collected as fees from private students had been routed by national coordinators — after deducting their commission — into the accounts of Jodhpur National University itself, with no part of it traced to the petitioner. No forged document or list of beneficiaries bearing his signature had been seized during the investigation.

It was further submitted that the director of Paira Infotech Private Limited, the agency uploading marksheet data to the JNU portal, had stated under Section 161 CrPC that a list signed by the petitioner used to be forwarded to his agency — but no such list had in fact been recovered, no specimen handwriting had been taken from the petitioner, and no reference had been made to the Forensic Science Laboratory. The statements of the alleged beneficiaries Balaram, Nirmala Kumari and Chainaram traced the marksheets only to Shyam Singh Meena and Ashok Saran, with no reference to the petitioner.

The State, represented by Mr. Gaurav Gupta, AGA, opposed the petition. The Public Prosecutor contended that the petitioner, as Chairman and Vice Chancellor, was the controlling authority of the university whose institutional machinery had been used to issue the impugned marksheets and that the question of his role was a matter for trial.

The Court was not persuaded. It made reference to the Supreme Court’s exposition in State of Haryana v Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335, and Lokesh Kumar Jain v State of Rajasthan, (2013) 11 SCC 130, for the proposition that where the allegations in the FIR and the material collected during investigation do not prima facie disclose the commission of the offences alleged, the High Court is entitled to quash the proceedings under Section 482 CrPC.

Examining each offence against the touchstone of the record, Justice Shrimali held that the deception contemplated by Section 415 IPC — and consequently the offence of cheating under Section 420 IPC — required proof of fraudulent or dishonest inducement causing wrongful loss to the victim or wrongful gain to the accused, none of which had emerged against the petitioner. The candidates whose marksheets were alleged to be forged had themselves not implicated the petitioner in their Section 161 CrPC statements; on the contrary, they identified Shyam Singh Meena as the point of payment and Ashok Saran as the intermediary.

On the forgery charges under Sections 467 and 468 IPC, the Court relied on the Supreme Court’s exposition in Jupally Lakshmikantha Reddy v State of Andhra Pradesh to underscore that the requisite mens rea — dishonest intention to cause wrongful loss to another or wrongful gain to oneself — had to be demonstrated and could not be inferred from the office held by the accused. No document seized in the course of investigation bore the petitioner’s signature, no list of candidates had been forensically attributed to him, and the alleged appointment of national coordinators using the scanned signatures of the registrar Pradeep Kumar De had not been substantiated by any FSL report.

On the conspiracy charge under Section 120B IPC, the Court observed that meeting of minds was the sine qua non of the offence and that the record disclosed no agreement, express or implied, between the petitioner and the named co-accused. The result of examinations, the issuance of provisional and permanent enrolment numbers, and the printing and verification of marksheets were governed by committee-level guidelines of the university, and the prosecution had produced no signed direction of the petitioner deviating from those guidelines.

The judge also recorded that the charge sheet had been pending since 2015, that the trial had not commenced, and that no witness had been examined in the intervening years. Invoking the right to speedy trial under Article 21 of the Constitution, the Court referred to Vipin Prasad Singh v State of Bihar, (2009) 3 SCC 355, where the Supreme Court had found it appropriate to quash criminal proceedings on the ground of inordinate delay, and to Lokesh Kumar Jain (supra), which had taken a similar view. Allowing the prosecution to continue, the Court held, would render the right to a speedy disposal illusory and result in a failure of justice.

Allowing the petition, the Court quashed FIR No. 15/2014 of Police Station SOG, CID, Jaipur, under Sections 420, 467, 468 and 120B IPC and all consequential criminal proceedings, including Case No. 915/2018 (NCV No. 4804/2018) titled State of Rajasthan v Shyam Singh & Ors., pending before the Additional Senior Civil Judge cum Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate No. 1, Jaipur, to the extent of the petitioner.

Title: Kamal Mehta v State of Rajasthan & Anr.

Case No.: S.B. Criminal Miscellaneous (Petition) No. 4154/2023

Citation: [2026:RJ-JP:18881]

Counsel for petitioner: Mr. Jitendra Mitruka with Mr. Rajesh Kala, Mr. Bhavya Kala, Mr. Harshit Sharma and Ms. Sapna Sharma

Counsel for respondents: Mr. Gaurav Gupta, AGA; Mr. Vishnu Dutt Sharma, AAAG for Mr. Bhuwnesh Sharma, AAG