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BOD 834/2025Not guilty

An accountant bought a share of a family's property. The seller accused the buyer of forging a will and underpaying.

7 min readJainam Shah

A chartered accountant bought a family plot, then was accused of forging a will and underpaying its owner. A settlement in a related dispute undercut the claims, and the Board found no misconduct.

Held
Not guiltyThe charge was not made out
Forum
Board of Discipline (First Schedule)
Clauses
Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule
Decided
File no.
PR/338/2022/DD/229/2022/BOD/834/2025
Source
Original order (PDF)

A woman who had inherited her family's Delhi property agreed to sell it to a chartered accountant, and a deal that dragged on for years turned into open warfare between them.1 By the time the dispute reached the accountancy regulator, the two of them had already fought — and settled — much of it in arbitration.

What happened#

A woman inherits her family's Delhi property through her mother's will, after the other legal heirs give up their claims in her favour.
She agrees to sell the whole property to a chartered accountant for a large sum, with part paid as earnest money and the rest due in stages. The deal stalls, and the buyer takes her to arbitration seeking to force the sale through.
The dispute narrows over the years that follow, and the two eventually complete a registered sale of only a third of the property, for a fraction of the original price. The arbitration is withdrawn. Soon after, she accuses him of coercing her into that sale deed, underpaying her, forging a separate commission agreement, and opening bank accounts in her name and her son's.
A police complaint over the same allegations closes for lack of evidence, and the regulator's own screening authority twice finds nothing to support them. Weighing the size of the sums involved, the Board sets both opinions aside and orders a full inquiry instead.
A separate arbitration over the rest of the property, brought by an unrelated buyer, ends in a settlement in which she affirms the earlier sale and gives up all further claims against him. At its own hearing, the Board finds no evidence of forgery or fraud beyond the ordinary risks of a private property deal, and closes the case.

The case took an unusual procedural detour before it was ever argued. The Director (Discipline) had twice found no misconduct, in prima facie opinions eight months apart. The Board considered those opinions at its 346th meeting and set them aside anyway — not because it disagreed with the reasoning, but because the sums at stake ran into crores of rupees and neither side had yet had a chance to be heard. It ordered a full inquiry rather than let the matter close on paper (para 6–7).

What decided that full inquiry, in the end, was a document neither the complainant nor the Director (Discipline) could get past: a consent award from an unrelated arbitration, in which the complainant had already affirmed the very sale she was now calling fraudulent (para 5, para 17).

The charge#

Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule covers what the Act calls "other misconduct" — conduct, whether or not connected with professional practice, that renders a member unfit to practise as a chartered accountant.2 It is the clause under which a member's private dealings, unconnected to any audit or certificate, can still be examined if they are serious enough.

The allegation here had nothing to do with accountancy: a forged will, an undervalued sale deed, and bank accounts opened without authority, all arising out of a private purchase of land. The Board found none of it made out and held him not guilty.

What the respondent said#

He denied forging anything, and pointed to a closure report from the police, who had investigated the same allegations and found no material to support them. Even the Director (Discipline), across two separate opinions, had found nothing to attribute forgery or fraud to him (para 11).

On the alleged commission agreement, he noted that the complainant had produced only photocopies of it, never the original, and argued that an unproduced document could not sustain a forensic finding against him. He pointed to her own contemporaneous paperwork — a no-objection certificate and an affidavit, both acknowledging the transaction — as inconsistent with the fraud she now alleged. And he argued that the consent award from the separate arbitration had already settled the dispute finally, barring her from reopening it before the regulator (para 12–13).

On the bank accounts, he said there was no bank statement, financial record or other material linking him to anything irregular, and that the entire dispute was a private commercial transaction falling outside the Institute's disciplinary reach (para 14).

What the Board held#

The complainant did not appear at the Board's hearing despite being given the opportunity, and the matter proceeded ex parte (para 16). What tipped the balance, in the Board's reading, was her own conduct in the parallel arbitration:

the Complainant had unequivocally affirmed the sale of the property, confirmed the title of the Respondent, and agreed that no claims or disputes of any nature whatsoever would survive between the parties (para 17)

Against a no-objection certificate and an affidavit that acknowledged the deal, and a later consent award that closed it, the Board found her allegations of forgery incompatible with her own record. On the undocumented commission agreement, it agreed that an unproduced original could not support a forensic finding, and it found no evidence at all connecting the respondent to the disputed bank accounts (para 18–19). Its conclusion was that the matter never crossed into professional territory at all:

the material on record clearly demonstrates that the dispute pertains to private commercial dealings and civil rights between the parties and does not disclose any element of professional misconduct or "other misconduct" (para 20)

The order#

the Respondent is Not Guilty of Other Misconduct under Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule to the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949

No punishment stage follows a not-guilty finding. The Board ordered the case closed under Rule 15(2) and disposed of it.3 Two hearings brought it to a close, after the Board itself had earlier insisted on a full inquiry rather than accept the screening authority's finding on paper.4

Why it matters#

This section is ours, not the Board's.

"Other misconduct" reaches private conduct that has nothing to do with your practice. This charge was about a land purchase, not an audit, and the Institute still heard it out. A serious allegation in your personal life can end up before the same Board that hears professional complaints.

A document you sign in one dispute can settle another. The no-objection certificate, the affidavit and the consent award — all created for a different, related fight — did more to answer the forgery allegation than anything argued at the hearing. Think about what your signature commits you to beyond the transaction in front of you.

A twice-repeated finding of not guilty is not automatically final. The Board set aside two Director (Discipline) opinions and ordered a fresh inquiry purely because of the amounts involved. Do not treat an early screening opinion as the end of the matter until the Board has actually confirmed it.

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

Footnotes#

  1. Smt. Mohit Lata Sunda, Dhanbad was the complainant, the owner of the property. CA. Gupta Vijay Kumar (M.No. 086481), Faridabad was the respondent, who bought a share of it. ↩

  2. Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule covers what the Act calls "other misconduct" — conduct, whether or not connected with professional practice, that renders a member unfit to practise as a chartered accountant or brings disrepute to the profession. ↩

  3. Rule 15(2) of the Chartered Accountants (Procedure of Investigations of Professional and Other Misconduct and Conduct of Cases) Rules, 2007 — where the Board finds a member not guilty, it records that finding and orders the complaint closed. There is no punishment hearing. ↩

  4. CA. Rajendra Kumar P (Presiding Officer), Ms. Dolly Chakrabarty, IAAS (Retd.) (Government Nominee) and CA. Priti Savla (Member). The respondent appeared in person with counsel; the complainant did not appear. The Board's 346th meeting, on 30 July 2025, set aside the Director (Discipline)'s two prima facie opinions and ordered a full inquiry. Hearings were held on 27 October 2025 (adjourned for want of the complainant's authorisation) and 9 December 2025 (heard and concluded). The findings were signed on 16 January 2026. ↩

Written by Jainam Shah. Found guilty under Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule; the Board ordered a not guilty. General information, not legal or professional advice — read the order itself before relying on it.

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