Judgment

Thomas, J.-Can prosecution be maintained in respect of a forged document produced in court unless complaint has been filed by the court concerned in that behalf? In other words, the question involved in this appeal is, whether the prohibition contained in Section 195(1)(b)(ii) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (for short ‘the Code’) would apply to such prosecution. The aforesaid question, tick­lish it may appear to some extent, seemed to have received a quietus from this Court with the pronouncement in Patel Laljibhai Somabha v. The State of Gujarat1, while considering the scope of its corresponding provision in the old Code of Criminal Procedure 1898. But a subsequent decision of this Court in Gopalakrishna Menon & Anr. v. D. Raja Reddy & Anr.2, which struck a different note thereon seemed to have revived the issue and kept in buoying up in the legal stream. That question, in this appeal, has arisen from the following facts :

2. A complaint was filed by second respondent (Lal Narain Singh) in the court of a Chief Judicial Magistrate, alleging offences, inter alia, under Sections 468, 469 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code on the facts that appellants had forged a docume