CBI court acquits Acharya Balkrishna in passport forgery case

DEHRADUN: A CBI court has acquitted Patanjali Ayurved co-founder Acharya Balkrishna and co-accused Naresh Chand Dwivedi in a long-standing case concerning allegations that Balkrishna fraudulently obtained an Indian passport using forged educational certificates.The case, investigated by CBI’s Anti-Corruption Branch in Dehradun, originated from a 2011 representation alleging that Balkrishna was a citizen of Nepal rather than India and had dishonestly secured an Indian passport.The prosecution’s case centred on documents submitted in 1998 to the regional passport office in Bareilly, where Balkrishna was accused of using two certificates purportedly issued by Sampurnanand Sanskrit University in Varanasi: a Purva Madhyama certificate submitted as proof of date of birth and a Shastri certificate submitted to obtain emigration check not required status.CBI alleged that the roll numbers on the certificates belonged to other individuals—identified during the probe as Kamal Singh and Leela Prasad Bhattarai—rather than Balkrishna, and that Naresh Chand Dwivedi, then principal of Sri Radha Krishna Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya in Khurja, had made handwritten entries on the contested documents.Consequently, Balkrishna faced charges under Section 471 of the IPC and Section 12(1)(b) of the Passports Act, 1967, while Dwivedi was charged under Section 466 of the IPC in a prosecution led by Ram Kumar for CBI, Dehradun.According to the defence counsel, the court’s decision to acquit hinged on several key weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, including the failure to prove forgery or track down the identity and whereabouts of the actual students whose roll numbers appeared in the university registers. The other factors include the disputed admissibility of secondary evidence under the Evidence Act and flaws in the handwriting analysis where expert opinions relied on photocopies rather than original documents, creating reasonable doubt regarding whether the questioned writing could be attributed to Dwivedi.The defence also successfully raised doubts regarding the allegations by pointing out that Balkrishna later passed the Acharya examination from the same university after completing the Purva Madhyama and Shastri courses.Stay updated with the latest Dehradun news. Download the TOI App.