---
title: A chartered accountant forged a document for a corruption-accused official. The Board took over a decade to decide.
description: A CBI corruption probe traced a backdated document, meant to explain a hidden windfall, back to the family's chartered accountant. The Board removed him from the Register after more than a decade.
case_number: BOD 153/2013
file_number: PR/04/2012/DD/34/2012/BOD/153/2013
forum: board-of-discipline
institute: icai
decided_on: 2024-08-27
punished_on: 2024-09-25
outcome: Removal
clauses: Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule
order_pdf: https://disc.icai.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/25.-BOD-153-2013.pdf
published: 2026-09-09
author: Jainam Shah
keywords: bod 153 2013, other misconduct, item 2 part iv first schedule, fabricated document, forged document, disproportionate assets case, cbi investigation chartered accountant, board of discipline removal
source: /icai/board-of-discipline/bod-153-2013
---

# A chartered accountant forged a document for a corruption-accused official. The Board took over a decade to decide.

A chartered accountant was pulled into a corruption investigation over a document meant to explain
where an accused official's money had come from. The document was dated years before it was
actually created.[^parties]

## What happened

```timeline
A central investigating agency, probing a port health officer for wealth far beyond his known
income, comes across a written agreement recording a large payment to his wife. The agreement is
dated years before the investigation itself began.

The officer's usual chartered accountant has fallen ill, and the officer is referred to another
accountant to get his paperwork done. Investigators come to believe that accountant prepared the
agreement himself, long after its stated date, to explain money that had in fact arrived only
recently.

The document surfaces not on the accountant's own office computer but on a colleague's, sent
there, the agency concludes, so that it could not be traced back to him. The colleague prints it
out at the accountant's request and passes it on, without reading what it contains.

The agency seizes computers, sends them for forensic examination, and takes a sworn statement from
the colleague before a magistrate. It prosecutes the accountant under the penal code alongside the
official and his associates, and separately reports him to the Institute.

The disciplinary case is adjourned for years at a stretch. When it finally reaches a hearing, the
accountant contests the forensic findings at length, arguing his own computer had been tampered
with after it was seized. The Board is not persuaded, and removes him from the Register for a
month.
```

Three details from the record did the deciding.

The first was where the document ended up before it reached the official. The Board found the
respondent had routed it not through his own printer but to a fellow chartered accountant's
computer, a colleague with no stake in the matter, so that the file could never be traced back to
the respondent's own system (para 18).

The second was the colleague's own account of that day. He told the Board he had taken a call from
the respondent asking to borrow his printer, since his own was not working; that a staff member
collected the printout the next morning without reading it; and that he later deleted an e-mail at
the respondent's request, only for the CBI to seize his hard disk soon afterwards (para 17).

The third was a single line of timing, and it went against the respondent. The official under
investigation told the Board he had first met the respondent only after the CBI's search of his
premises had already taken place — a sequence the Board read as proof the document had been
created on the respondent's computer and backdated to a date years earlier (para 19).

## The charge

- **Item (2) of Part IV** — the First Schedule's catch-all for "other misconduct": conduct that
  discredits the profession without matching any of the Schedule's more specific items.[^item2]

The underlying conduct went well beyond a professional lapse. CBI separately prosecuted the
respondent under Sections 120B, 465, 467, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code, before a criminal
court in Chennai, for conspiracy and forgery (para 3). That prosecution runs on its own timetable
and was not before the Board; its finding covers only whether the same conduct amounted to
professional misconduct under the Act.

## What the respondent said

His defence turned entirely on forensics. Investigators had linked the document to a computer in
his office, but not to his own machine — it was found on a workstation used by a junior with no
connection to the case, which he said proved someone else had placed it there (para 7). He pointed
to the seizure record itself: his computer reached the forensic laboratory wrapped only in paper,
while a colleague's machine seized the same day arrived sealed in cloth, which he argued showed his
had been opened while in the agency's custody (para 8).

He also argued the timing worked against the charge, not for it. The document's own internal file
identifiers carried a timestamp that, he said, predated the point at which the CBI's own case had
him sending it by e-mail (para 9). No copy of any such e-mail was ever found in the sent folder of
any account he used, despite the range of forensic techniques available to trace one (paras
11–12). A sworn statement of what a witness remembered years later, he argued, was no substitute
for a screenshot of a sent folder — evidence the investigation never produced (para 12).

## What the Board held

The Board weighed the respondent's forensic arguments against what it had itself heard from the
two witnesses, and found the arguments wanting. It recorded that his claims of tampering and
planting "are not backed by conclusive evidence" (para 19), and treated the document's path — sent
to avoid detection, then printed and handed over — as effectively settling who had made it.

One piece of evidence went unaddressed. The same official whose meeting date the Board relied on
to fix the timing had, earlier in his own evidence, told the Board that the respondent had not
prepared the document at all — that a lawyer had drafted it (para 16). The findings do not return
to that statement or explain why it did not weigh against the charge.

Concluding, the Board held:

> Pursuant to the detailed perusal of the documents on record and submissions made by the parties,
> the Board is of the view that the Complainant has been able to convince the Board that the
> Respondent has entered into criminal conspiracy with Dr. V.V. Sairam Babu and has thus created
> forged and fabricated documents in order to account for the disproportionate assets possessed by
> Dr. V.V. Sairam Babu in his own name and in the name of his wife (para 20)

And:

> the Respondent is 'Guilty' of Other Misconduct falling within the meaning of Item (2) of Part-IV
> of the First Schedule to the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 (para 21)

## The order

At the punishment hearing, the respondent did not appear. The Board had written to him a week
before, offering a hearing; he answered twice by e-mail, citing his health, and asked the Board to
decide on the written submissions he had already filed (para 2). It then held:

> the Board decided to remove the name of [the Respondent] for a period of 30 days from the
> Register of Members.[^bracket]

A thirty-day removal sits above a reprimand or a fine on the Board's scale of punishments — the
respondent's name came off the Register itself, if only for a month.[^removal] The Board that
passed it was a two-member bench, not the three who had signed the underlying findings the month
before.[^coram] By then the case had been open for more than a decade.[^timeline]

## Why it matters

*This section is ours, not the Board's.*

**Routing something through a colleague's system does not make its origin harder to trace, only
its recipient.** The document reached the official only after the respondent asked a fellow
accountant to print an attachment his own printer supposedly couldn't manage. If you need to send
something you would rather not have traced to you, sending it through someone else's account still
leaves it traceable to you.

**An unrebutted piece of testimony still leaves a scar on the record.** The findings never explain
why the official's own account — that a lawyer, not the respondent, had drafted the document — did
not weigh against the charge. Read a disciplinary order for what it actually settles, not for
whether every loose thread was tied off.

**Adjournments do not make an allegation disappear.** Over a decade passed between the first
hearing and the one that decided this case, most of it a single gap with no hearing at all. The
Institute's file stays open the whole time.

This summarises a public order and links the primary source. It is general information, not legal
or professional advice.

[^parties]: The complaint was referred to the Institute by *Sri C. Easwaramoorthy, IPS*,
    Superintendent of Police, CBI Anti-Corruption Branch, Chennai, in the course of investigating a
    separate corruption case (RC 3(A)/2009). The respondent was *CA. T.M. Jeyachandran (M. No.
    021939)*, of Chennai. The two witnesses before the Board were *Dr. V.V. Sairam Babu*, the port
    health officer under investigation by the CBI, and *CA. K.P. Vasantha Kumar*, a chartered
    accountant on whose office computer the disputed document was found. The document itself
    purported to record a payment from *Shri V. Loganathan*, a co-accused in the CBI case, to
    *Smt. V.V. Ramani*, Dr. Sairam Babu's wife.

[^item2]: Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule to the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 is the
    Schedule's catch-all for "other misconduct" — conduct that discredits the profession without
    falling under any of the more specific items listed elsewhere.

[^bracket]: The order's operative line names the respondent and his membership number directly:
    "the Board decided to remove the name of CA. T.M. Jeyachandran (M. No.021939) for a period of
    30 days from the Register of Members." This page substitutes "[the Respondent]" for both;
    nothing else in the quotation is altered.

[^removal]: Section 21A(3) gives the Board of Discipline three kinds of punishment: reprimand,
    removal of the member's name from the Register for a period, and a fine — on the scale
    reprimand < fine < removal. This order used removal alone, for thirty days. Check the current
    sub-section before relying on any figure; the provision has been amended over time.

[^coram]: The findings, dated 27th August 2024, were signed by CA. Rajendra Kumar P (Presiding
    Officer), Ms. Dolly Chakrabarty (Government Nominee) and CA. Priti Savla (Member), all present
    in person at the final hearing. The punishment order, passed on 25th September 2024, was
    signed by a two-member Board of the same Presiding Officer and Government Nominee, appearing
    through video conference, without CA. Priti Savla.

[^timeline]: The matter was first listed for hearing on 9th October 2013 and not heard again until
    25th December 2022, both adjourned at the respondent's request. It was part-heard on 5th
    January 2023 and 19th April 2023, adjourned again on 23rd January 2024 for non-appearance of
    the parties, and finally heard and concluded on 12th June 2024. The findings were signed on
    27th August 2024; the Board wrote to the respondent on 18th September 2024 offering a
    punishment hearing on 25th September 2024, which he did not attend, and passed the order that
    day.