CBI court in Dehradun acquits Acharya Balkrishna in 1998 passport case

A CBI court in Dehradun on 7 September acquitted Acharya Balkrishna and co-accused Naresh Chandra Dwivedi in a 15-year-old case over an Indian passport said to rest on forged educational papers. Balkrishna is general secretary of Patanjali Yogpeeth and managing director of Patanjali Ayurved. The Special Judicial Magistrate (CBI) cleared both men after a trial that began with a 2011 complaint calling him a Nepali national who had obtained an Indian passport on false documents.

The Central Bureau of Investigation's Anti-Corruption Branch in Dehradun built the file around papers filed in 1998 at the regional passport office in Bareilly. Prosecutors said Balkrishna submitted a Purva Madhyama certificate as proof of date of birth and a Shastri certificate to obtain emigration check not required status. Both were said to come from Sampurnanand Sanskrit University in Varanasi. CBI alleged the roll numbers belonged to other students, named in the probe as Kamal Singh and Leela Prasad Bhattarai.

Dwivedi was then principal of Sri Radha Krishna Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya in Khurja. The agency said he made handwritten entries on the contested certificates. Balkrishna was charged under Section 471 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 12(1)(b) of the Passports Act, 1967. Dwivedi was charged under Section 466 of the IPC. Public prosecutor Ram Kumar led the CBI case in Dehradun.

Defence counsel told reporters the acquittal turned on gaps the court treated as reasonable doubt. The prosecution, they said, did not prove forgery and did not locate the students whose roll numbers appeared in the university registers. Secondary evidence under the Evidence Act was disputed. Handwriting opinions relied on photocopies rather than original documents, which weakened any claim that the writing was Dwivedi's. After those holes, the magistrate did not convict.

Balkrishna said he had full faith in the judicial system and that truth prevailed. He also said the process was exhausting. He spoke of humiliation, disrepute and the negative energy of others across fifteen years. The 2011 complaint had followed him through Patanjali's rise as a consumer brand and through later commercial and regulatory fights that are separate from this file. This verdict closes only the passport case.

The allegation that he was a Nepali national was the political core of the original complaint. An Indian passport on that theory would have been a fraud on the Bareilly office. The court did not accept that the papers before it proved that fraud beyond doubt. Acquittal is not a finding that the certificates were genuine. It is a finding that the state did not prove they were forged in the way the charges required. That distinction matters for anyone who wants to treat the order as a full clearing of the historical record. The order does not rewrite 1998. It ends the criminal case.

Patanjali Yogpeeth sits in Haridwar. Balkrishna has been Ramdev's closest business partner since the early years of the yoga enterprise. The passport file sat beside that public life without ever coming to a verdict until this week. Fifteen years is long enough for witnesses to age, for originals to go missing, and for photocopy evidence to fail a criminal standard. CBI still charged. The magistrate still heard the evidence. The result on 7 September was not a bargain. It was a failure of proof.

Whether CBI appeals is a separate decision. For now the working legal fact is simple. The Special Judicial Magistrate in Dehradun has acquitted Acharya Balkrishna and Naresh Chandra Dwivedi. The 1998 Bareilly application is no longer a live criminal charge. The 2011 complaint has been tested and has not stuck. That is the whole of what the court did.