...being proactive and committing fraud? Is it ever appropriate for a quality inspector to grind, pound, file, or otherwise alter/modify a part to get it to meet drawing requirements/pass inspection?
depending on the industry "grinding, pounding, filing, or otherwise altering/modifying a part to get it to meet drawing requirements/pass inspection" is a contractual violation and can lead to legal consequences. These actions are typically considered "repair"; they may bring the part into dimensional compliance but are outside of the approved process for creatign the feature or dimension and can induce additional stresses or otherwise weaken the integrity of the part. If you are in the Aerospace and Defense industries, this could be legal trouble and considered fraud if you haven't documetned the occurences and received permission from your customer to take such actions.
If you aren't in one of the affected industries, you might still consider teh affect of these additional stresses on your parts. You may be creating defects (in the legal sense of the word) that open you up to legal action shoudl a product failure resulting from this defect injure someone, etc. (of course you may not be in such an industry either...)
These caveats have nothing to do with the appropriateness of an inspector perfroming such work. That is an internal business decision regarding process capability, hidden wastes and continual improvement...