Payment under protest does not prove coercion; stay and refund relief failed once duty was already debited in the PLA.

A mere endorsement that duty was debited under protest did not by itself establish coercion. In the absence of independent evidence of pressure, compulsion, or threatened recovery, payment was treated as voluntary rather than involuntary. Once the disputed amount had already been entered in the assessee's PLA, the stay request for pre-deposit and the connected refund claim had no continuing basis. The application was therefore treated as infructuous and dismissed.

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Issues: Whether the application for stay and refund could survive after the disputed amount had already been debited in the assessee's PLA, and whether the payment was shown to have been made under coercion so as to justify relief.

Analysis: The disputed amount had already been entered in the assessee's Personal Ledger Account, and the only contemporaneous indication was the endorsement that duty was debited under protest. That endorsement, by itself, did not establish coercion. There was no independent evidence of pressure, compulsion, or threatened seizure to show that the debit was made involuntarily. Payment under protest was held not to be equivalent to payment under coercion. In the absence of proof of coercive recovery, the request for stay of pre-deposit and the associated refund plea no longer survived.

Conclusion: The application was held to be infructuous and was dismissed.

Final Conclusion: Relief was refused because the disputed duty had already been paid without proof of coercive compulsion, leaving no subsisting basis for interim protection or refund in the stay proceedings.

Ratio Decidendi: A mere entry that duty was paid under protest does not establish coercion; unless coercive compulsion is proved by independent evidence, a stay application for pre-deposit becomes infructuous after payment is made.

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