The Supreme Court on Thursday was outwitted for a moment on Thursday by the Andhra Pradesh High Court's strange reasoning - it would be an abuse of process of law if police registered a case against a person who forged land records but did not use it to cause revenue loss to the state.

What a bench of Justices Sanjay K Kaul and MK Sundresh found even more strange was the Andhra Pradesh government's decision to accept such an unusual decision and not appeal against it before the apex court. A private person, after reading the unusual HC order, moved the SC and senior advocate Sidharth Luthra pointed out that this is being misused in private civil disputes between parties, who now could take the liberty of forging land records without the fear of law as long as they paid the prevalent rate of land revenue.

Visakhapatnam police in 2011 had registered an FIR in respect of a land dispute accusing the private respondents of submitting fake and fabricated house tax book and tax receipts to the Urban Land Ceiling Department to grab valuable Government land. The private respondents filed a petition before the HC seeking quashing of the FIR itself.

Justices Kaul and Sundresh said, "The impugned order dated November 9, 2011 is an unusual one, if we may say so! We may note that the Andhra Pradesh government chose not to file any appeal against the quashing order. On a perusal of the order we find that the submissions of the counsel for the appellants are recorded and thereafter pleadings have been extracted."

The bench said, "We find the aforesaid reasoning totally unsustainable. The effect of this reasoning is that fabrication of documents is permissible if it does not cause loss to the revenue! We have thus no hesitation in coming to the conclusion that the impugned order must go and is consequently set aside."

"The question now is what should be the consequence thereof. We may notice that the FIR was registered on March 6, 2011. More than a decade has passed. The state government in its wisdom has chosen to accept the order though in the counter affidavit they now week to support the FIR. In our view, obviously the state seems not to be perturbed with the order," it said.

"The appellants are perturbed by the order because that is sought was utilized in the civil proceedings to use it as some kind of clean chit to the private respondents. The latter aspect cannot be permissible and for that reason also we are required to hold that the impugned order is not sustainable," the bench said.

"We are thus of the view that no purpose will be served in remitting the matter back to the High Court or for restarting the investigation in view of the passage of time. Suffice to say that in view of the order being quashed, the private respondents cannot take advantage of the same as a clean chit to them. The civil court will take its own view on the basis of the evidence before it regarding the inter se disputes between the private parties. Our only regret is that this issue is pending for almost eight years even before this Court! We accordingly allow the appeals," said Justices Kaul and Sundresh.

(With inputs from agencies)