1. Forgery of Acts by Public Officers

1. Forgery of Acts by Public Officers

Saving the cases mentioned above, any public officer, or servant who shall, in the exercise of his functions, commit forgery by any false signature, or by the alteration of any act, writing, or signature, or by inserting the name of any supposititious person, or by any writing made or entered in any register or other public act, when already formed or completed, shall, on conviction, be liable to hard labour for a term from two to four years, with or without solitary confinement (Section 187).

The three essential elements of this crime are:

(a) The status of the agent and the abuse which he makes of his functions

(b) The manner of falsification

(c) The nature of the document falsified.

The subject of this crime can be only a public officer or servant. We have already had occasion to examine the meaning of this expression. It comprises every person who is lawfully entrusted with the carrying out of any act appertaining to the public administration. But the quality of public officer or servant in the agent is not sufficient: it is further necessary that the forgery shall have been committed in the exercise of his functions. Such abuse makes the act more heinous because his position as a public officer or servant makes the perpetration of the offence easier and the injury which is thereby caused to public faith is graver. The requirement that the forgery shall have been committed by the public officer or servant in the exercise of his functions implies that the document must be one failing within the official competence or jurisdiction of the public officer or servant concerned.

The manner of falsification may be:

i) by false signatures; or

ii) by the alteration of any act, writing or signature; or

iii) by inserting the name of any fictitious person; or

iv) by any writing made or entered in any register or other public act when already formed and completed. Any one of these modes will be sufficient to constitute the crime.

False signature is that generally which is not of the person whose name it represents. The signature is falsified either by counterfeiting the true signature by a more or less good imitation, or by falsifying the genuine signature in order to attribute it to another, although the latter case would fall more correctly under forgery "by the alteration of signatures".

It is generally taught that if the false signature is of a deceased or inexistent person then the case would properly fall within the hypothesis of forgery “by the insertion of the name of a supposititious person” .

“Vi e' falsa sottoscrizione quando le vera e' almeno potenzialmente possibile, e la falsa ne piglia il luogo. Ma quando ciò non sia, vi sara’ reato di falso, ma non per questo capo, si bene per l’altro, cioè per supposizione di persona, poiché non solo la firma, ma tutta la persona si suppone dal falsario, e si fa apparire come esistente e vera”299 .

Where the falsification is by the alteration of the act or writing or by the making or entering in the document of any writing after it is formed or completed, the crime, according to the authorities, arises only where the alteration, or the imitation is material, i.e., such as to affect the truth or value of the document. This is not due to any requirement that there should be any prejudice actually caused or even possible, which requirement is not, as we have seen, of the essence of the crime of forgery of public documents, but it is due to the fact that, if the meaning or purport or value or validity of the document is not in some way affected, it cannot be said that the document has been “falsified” .

“La falsità per dirsi tale deve attaccare l'atto o la scrittura, in modo che denoti o comprovi una cosa diversa da quella che s'intendeva. Deve quindi aver per iscopo d'ingenerare tuia falsa idea della cosa che ha format'oggetto dello scritto, o delle qualità di essa. In consequenza se si aggiungono in una scrittura parole che non mutino il senso della stessa, non può' esservi contraffacimento costituente falsità' in

299 Arabia, op. cit., p. 158