Refund of excess excise duty follows as restitution; procedural objections and fresh duty on the refunded amount cannot defeat entitlement.

Excess excise duty recovered under orders later set aside is refundable as restitution, and the refund entitlement cannot be restricted by narrow objections to individual products where the revisional finding governed the assessment orders as a whole. An unsupported gate-pass objection was displaced by acknowledgment evidence, and the absence of payment under protest under Rule 233-B was treated as procedural rather than decisive. The amount restored by refund also could not be subjected to fresh excise duty under Section 4 of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944, because there was no basis to tax money returned after an erroneous recovery. The full refund claim was therefore sustainable.

---

---

Issues: Whether the assessee was entitled to refund of excise duty rejected on the grounds that the revisional order related only to one product, that one refund claim was unsupported by a gate pass, that some duty was not paid under protest, and that the refund amount itself could be subjected to duty.

Analysis: The assessee had supplied several products under the distributorship arrangement, and the revisional authority had, in substance, ruled that the buyer could not be treated as a related person while the assessee was claiming exemption under the notification. That finding governed all products covered by the earlier assessment orders, so the refund could not be confined to a single item. The missing gate pass claim was supported by an acknowledgment of receipt, and the department did not rebut that evidence. The requirement of protest under Rule 233-B was treated as procedural, and in any event the duty had been paid during the pendency of revision and became refundable once the lower orders were set aside. The refund amount itself could not be treated as part of assessable value under Section 4 of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944, because there was no basis to levy duty again on money being restored after an erroneous recovery.

Conclusion: The assessee was entitled to the full refund claimed, and the partial rejection was unsustainable.

Ratio Decidendi: Where excess excise duty is recovered under orders later set aside, refund follows as restitution, and procedural objections or an attempt to levy duty again on the refunded amount cannot defeat that entitlement.

---