Last verified: July 2026<\/p>\n
A senior regional political leader and his son were each sentenced to seven years in prison. The trigger was not violence, not a riot, not embezzlement of public money. It was two PAN cards. The two cards carried two different dates of birth for the same young man, and the prosecution proved the documents had been fabricated to secure electoral and administrative benefits he was not entitled to. The trial court convicted both under the forgery, cheating and conspiracy provisions of the old code.<\/p>\n
The charges that put them away read like a checklist of the forgery chapter: forgery, forgery for the purpose of cheating, and using a forged document as genuine. Under the old code those were sections 468, 471 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Today those same acts are prosecuted under Section 336 BNS<\/strong> and its neighbours in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The forgery is identical. Only the number on the charge-sheet changed.<\/p>\n That change happened on 1 July 2024. On that date the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) replaced the Indian Penal Code that had governed Indian criminal law since 1860. Forgery, one of the oldest offences in the book, moved house. The four scattered IPC provisions that dealt with it (sections 463, 465, 468 and 469) were folded into a single section with numbered sub-sections. The doctrine did not change. The numbering did.<\/p>\n Here’s why that matters to anyone who touches a criminal file. A junior advocate who cannot instantly tell a magistrate that Sec. 336(3) is the old IPC 468 looks unprepared. An investigating officer who charges IPC 468 for an act committed after 1 July 2024 hands the defence a quashing point. And a reader searching “is 336(3) bailable” needs an answer that is exact, because the difference between the sub-sections is the difference between a warrant arrest and a summons.<\/p>\n Forgery is rarely dramatic. It shows up as a fake sale deed transferring land the seller never owned, a forged will that cuts out a sibling, a second Aadhaar card, or a fabricated bank sanction letter that unlocks a loan. It almost always travels with cheating and criminal conspiracy, which is why the dual-PAN-card matter carried five charges, not one.<\/p>\n\n The lesson from that case is blunt: forgery is not a paperwork technicality. It is a substantive offence that can cost years of liberty, and the person who understands exactly which sub-section applies, and why, is the person who controls the case.<\/p>\n This guide maps every sub-section of Sec. 336 to the IPC provision it replaced, sets out the punishment and bailability of each tier, works through the ingredients the prosecution must prove, and walks the leading Supreme Court rulings that still govern the section. It then places Sec. 336 inside the wider forgery family, from Sec. 335 (making a false document) through Sec. 340 (using one as genuine). By the end you’ll be able to read a forgery charge-sheet the way a practitioner does.<\/p>\n Sec. 336 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 defines and punishes forgery: making a false document or electronic record with intent to defraud.<\/strong> It replaces IPC 463, 465, 468 and 469. General forgery carries up to 2 years (336(2)); forgery for cheating up to 7 years (336(3)); forgery to harm reputation up to 3 years (336(4)).<\/p>\n What follows breaks each of those tiers down, maps them to the IPC, and answers the questions that actually decide a forgery case: who is liable, is it bailable, and what the prosecution has to prove. Use the table of contents to jump to the part you need.<\/p>\n\n
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