Cash gifts from close relatives cannot be treated as unexplained...

Cash gifts from close relatives cannot be treated as unexplained credits where gift deeds, confirmations, tax returns, financial statements and responses to statutory notices establish donor identity, transaction genuineness and basic creditworthiness. The assessee's initial burden is then discharged, and any enquiry into donors' actual funding sources belongs in their own assessments unless a statute provides otherwise. Earlier adverse donor assessments or doubts about financial capacity cannot alone establish that gifted funds were the assessee's own money. On these principles, the cash-gift addition and consequential special-rate tax treatment were deleted.