A fifty-year-old land dispute reaches the Supreme Court. One side produces a 1975 document to claim ownership; the other side says the signature on it is forged and asks for forensic handwriting analysis. In Hussain Bin Awaz v. Mittapally Venkataramulu & Ors., 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 1083, the Supreme Court set aside a Telangana High Court order permitting exactly that examination — holding that expert comparison of handwriting can only be sought for an admitted document, not one whose very authenticity is what is being disputed. The ruling turns on Section 72 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA), and it exposes a gatekeeping requirement that catches out more litigants than one might expect.
72. Comparison of signature, writing or seal with others admitted or proved. (1) In order to ascertain whether a signature, writing or seal is that of the person by whom it purports to have been written or made, any signature, writing, or seal admitted or proved to the satisfaction of the Court to have been written or made by that person may be compared with the one which is to be proved, although that signature, writing or seal has not been produced or proved for any other purpose. (2) The Court may direct any person present in Court to write any words or figures for the purpose of enabling the Court to compare the words or figures so written with any words or figures alleged to have been written by such person. (3) This section applies also, with any necessary modifications, to finger impressions.
The word doing the most work in subsection (1) is "admitted or proved." Comparison under Section 72 requires a genuine, already-established sample — one side cannot manufacture a comparison exercise using a signature whose own genuineness is itself the contested question. That is exactly the trap the appellant in Hussain Bin Awaz fell into: the 1975 document was the disputed instrument, not an admitted specimen, so there was nothing legitimate to compare it against under this section. The Supreme Court's phrase for the rule was blunt — Section 39 read with Section 72 "can be invoked only in relation to an admitted document," and the burden of producing genuine comparison samples falls on the party alleging forgery, not the party defending the document's authenticity.
| Route | Governing provision | Who compares |
|---|---|---|
| Court's own visual comparison | Section 72 BSA | The Judge, using admitted samples and the Judge's own eyes |
| Expert opinion evidence | Section 39 BSA (opinions of experts) | A forensic document examiner, whose opinion is placed before the Court as evidence |
These two routes are not competitors — they are complementary, and Indian courts have repeatedly said neither is mandatory to the exclusion of the other. In Ajay Kumar Parmar v. State of Rajasthan, AIR 2013 SC 633, the Supreme Court held that a handwriting expert's opinion is "fallible, liable to error like that of any other witness," and can be relied on or rejected like any other testimony — while also affirming that a Court has no legal bar preventing it from directly comparing a disputed writing against an admitted one, using its own eyes and applying its own observation, precisely as Section 72 contemplates. In Manorama Naik v. State of Odisha, 2022 LiveLaw (SC) 297, the Court went further, holding that expert opinion is "not the only way or mode" of proving handwriting — Sections 72 and 39 together offer alternative, mutually reinforcing paths to the same finding.
Subsection (2) gives the Court a second tool: it can direct any person physically present in court to write specific words or figures on the spot, then compare that fresh, court-supervised specimen against the disputed writing. This is distinct from subsection (1)'s reliance on pre-existing admitted samples — it lets the Court generate its own comparison material in real time, under conditions the Court itself controls, removing any question about whether an older admitted sample was written under different physical or emotional conditions than the disputed document.
Consider a cheque-dishonour prosecution where the accused denies signing the cheque. The complainant produces the accused's admitted signature from an unrelated, undisputed bank form — a valid comparison sample under subsection (1). If that alone leaves the Court uncertain, subsection (2) lets the trial judge direct the accused, present in court, to write a sample signature then and there, giving the Court a second, contemporaneously-supervised data point to weigh against both the disputed cheque and the earlier admitted specimen. Kerala High Court has confirmed that trial courts are indeed empowered to undertake exactly this kind of direct comparison in cheque-dishonour matters, rather than being required to wait for a forensic report before proceeding.
Subsection (3) extends the entire section, "with any necessary modifications," to finger impressions — a deliberately flexible instruction, since comparing ridge patterns is technically different from comparing cursive handwriting, but the underlying evidentiary logic (compare the disputed mark against an admitted or court-generated sample) carries over unchanged. This matters disproportionately for litigants who cannot read or write and habitually use a thumb impression instead of a signature; for them, Section 72 is often the only realistic route to proving or disproving execution of a document, since handwriting comparison in the conventional sense is simply unavailable.
The change from the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 is purely structural — the old Section 73 was a single unbroken paragraph; the BSA numbers the same content as subsections (1), (2), and (3), making the three distinct comparison mechanisms easier to cite and argue separately. No substantive wording was altered, which is precisely why the pre-2024 body of case law interpreting Section 73 IEA — including decades-old authority — remains squarely applicable to Section 72 BSA today.
Key Takeaways
- Admitted-document gate: comparison under Section 72 requires a genuine admitted or already-proved sample — it cannot be used to test the very document whose authenticity is in dispute (Hussain Bin Awaz v. Mittapally Venkataramulu, 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 1083).
- Two complementary routes: the Court's own comparison under Section 72, and expert opinion evidence under Section 39 — neither excludes the other (Manorama Naik v. State of Odisha, 2022 LiveLaw (SC) 297).
- Courts should be cautious, not conclusive: Ajay Kumar Parmar v. State of Rajasthan, AIR 2013 SC 633, warns against resting findings solely on a judge's own visual comparison.
- Two distinct comparison sources: pre-existing admitted samples (subsection 1) versus a fresh, court-directed writing sample taken on the spot (subsection 2).
- Extends to finger impressions: subsection (3) makes this section the primary route for litigants who sign by thumb impression rather than handwriting.
Section 72 hands courts real investigative power over disputed signatures and marks — but the case law consistently frames that power narrowly. It works only against a genuine baseline, it should not be leaned on as a substitute for expert scrutiny in serious matters, and its two subsections offer genuinely different tools for genuinely different situations. Litigants who understand which comparison route actually applies to their facts, before asking a court to invoke it, save themselves the fate of the appellant in Hussain Bin Awaz — arguing for a comparison the section was never built to allow.