Finality of prior ruling on seized diary entries bars fresh reliance on the same evidence in later adjudication.

Where a later adjudication rests on the same seized diary entries and the same legal issue already decided on merits, the prior final ruling governs. The earlier High Court decision had held that diary entries, by themselves, are not substantive evidence of unlawful foreign exchange transactions and cannot establish contravention. Because the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge to that ruling, the determination attained finality. In these circumstances, the Tribunal declined to depart from the binding earlier view and treated the subsequent order and show cause notice founded on the diary entries as unsustainable.

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Issues: Whether the impugned adjudication founded on the seized diary entries could be sustained when an earlier judgment on the same diary and substantially similar issue had already held such entries to be inadmissible and the Supreme Court had dismissed the challenge.

Analysis: The Tribunal noted that the present proceeding arose from the same factual matrix of the seized diary and that the earlier connected appeal had already been decided by the High Court on merits. That decision held that the diary entries, by themselves, were not substantive evidence of contravention and could not be relied upon as proof of unlawful foreign exchange transactions. The Tribunal further noted that the Supreme Court had dismissed the challenge to that judgment, giving the earlier decision finality. In view of the identity of facts and legal issue, and the binding effect of the earlier final determination, the Tribunal declined to take a different view on the same material.

Conclusion: The impugned order and the show cause notice founded on the diary entry were unsustainable and liable to be set aside in favour of the appellant.

Ratio Decidendi: Where the same factual foundation and legal issue have already been conclusively decided in earlier proceedings, and the prior decision has attained finality, a subsequent adjudication cannot disregard that binding determination and must follow the earlier ruling on admissibility and evidentiary value.

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