A Hong Kong University law student has been ordered to do community service by the District Court for forging examination result slips and using them to deceive the institute.

Cheng Sing-ho, 23, pleaded guilty to two counts of using a false instrument and one of forgery. Judge Chua Fi-lan ordered Cheng to perform 200 hours of community service for each of the offences, to be served concurrently. She said although a custodial sentence seemed appropriate, community service was meted out after considering his medical and psychiatric conditions.

Cheng was an undergraduate at the time of offences. After completing his third academic year in July 2006 he sent an email to the faculty's assistant registrar, challenging the accuracy of the examination result slip he received from the university. He claimed that the Cumulative Grade Point Average shown on the result slip did not tally with those shown on the slips he had received in the previous two academic years and in the first semester of year three.

He told the assistant registrar that the "miscalculation" might have been due to "technical errors" in the faculty's computer system. The assistant registrar eventually discovered that the examination result slips for year two and the first semester of year three kept in the defendant's file had been replaced with slips forged by him.

On July 12, 2006, the defendant, upon request of the assistant registrar, met a professor of the university's Department of Law. He gave the professor two false examination result slips dated June 23, 2004 and June 17, 2005 with the intention of inducing him to accept them as genuine. The slips bore the same altered results as those found in his student file.

On May 28, 2005, he failed to attend an examination, falsely claiming to have been trapped in a lift.