A person is held to be guilty of forgery if he fabricates a false instrument for his personal gain or benefit. Under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act, 1981 “instrument” means any document, whether of a formal or informal character; any stamp issued or sold by the Post Office; any Inland Revenue stamp and any disc, tape, sound track or other device on or in which information is recorded or stored by mechanical, electronic or other means. According to the provision of this Act, ‘currency note’ is not an instrument and a mark denoting payment of postage which the Post Office authorize to be used instead of an adhesive stamp, is to be treated as if it were a stamp issued by the Post Office. The terms ‘writing’, ‘document’ and ‘instrument’ have been conventionally used in the Criminal Law to denote the subject matter of forgery. At common law, the preference was for ‘writing’, under the Forgery Act, 1913 it was for ‘document’ and under the new legislation “instrument” has been defined to include “any document, whether of a formal or informal character”.
