TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2015 (8) TMI 966
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....oner and other family members sold three parcels of land situated in the City of Ahmedabad to a Sanghvi Group operating in the name of Sanghvi Infracon Pvt. Ltd., who were engaged in the construction business. Search and seizure operations were carried out on the business premises of the said Sanghvi Infracon Pvt. Ltd. and other related persons on 9th March 2011. On the premise that certain documents belonging to the petitioner and other family members were found from the business premises of the said searched person, summons under Section 131(1A) of the Act was issued against the petitioner on 24th June 2011. A notice under Section 153C of the Act came to be issued by the Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, Central Circle, 2(4) Ahmedabad against the petitioner and others on 25th September 2012, in which it was stated as under : "A search U/s. 132 of the Income-tax Act was conducted in Group cases of Sanghvi Group (Shri Dhirajlal Vaghjibhai Sanghvi and others), on 09.03.2011. The income-tax of six assessment years immediately preceding the from A.Y. 2005-06 to 2010-11 is required to be assessed/re-assessed in your 153C r.w.s. 153(A) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 for A.Y. 2005-200....
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....herefore, Notice u/s. 153C of the Act is issued to the assessee." 6. As noted, the petitioners filed these petitions, challenging the order passed by the Commissioner of Income Tax under Section 127(2) of the Act as also the notices issued under Section 153C of the Act on various grounds. However, while making oral submissions before us learned Counsel gave up challenge to the impugned order dated 2nd February 2012 passed under Section 127(2) of the Act but maintained the challenge of the petitioners to the notices issued under Section 153C of the Act. 7. Before recording and dealing with the rival contentions, we may recall that as per the reasons recorded by the Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax for initiating action under Section 153C of the Act against the petitioners, he had relied upon certain documents found from the possession of Sanghvi Infracon Pvt. Ltd. during the search operation at their business premises. Such documents were (1) Sale deeds of the land in question and (2) agreement entered into by and between the tenant of the said property and petitioners on various dates. In some cases, the authority has relied on receipts of payments along with the sale deeds; ....
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....the Assessing Officer has to first be satisfied under Section 153C, which provides for the assessment of income of any other person, i.e., any other person who is not covered by the search, that the books of account or other valuable article or documents belongs to the other person (person other than the one searched). He shall hand over the valuable article or books of account or document to the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over the other person. Thereafter, the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over the other person has to proceed against him and issue notice to that person in order to assess or reassess the income of such other person in the manner contemplated by the provisions of section 153A. 15. It needs to be appreciated that the satisfaction that is required to be reached by the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over the searched person is that the valuable articles or books of account or documents seized during the search belong to a person other than the searched person. There is no requirement in section 153C(1) that the Assessing Officer should also be satisfied that such valuable articles or books of account or documents belonging to the other perso....
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....f initiation of the search under section 132 or making of requisition under section 132A in the second proviso to [sub-section (1) of] section 153A shall be construed as reference to the date of receiving the books of account or documents or assets seized or requisitioned by the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over such other person." 16. From the above, it can be seen that sub-section (1) of Section 153C of the Act starts with non obstante clause and provides that, notwithstanding anything contained in Sections 139, 147, 148, 149, 151 or Section 153 of the Act, if the requirements of the said sub-section are satisfied, the Assessing Officer having jurisdiction over the person other than the person searched shall proceed against such other person and issue notice and assess or re-assess income of such a person in accordance with the provisions contained in Section 153A of the Act. Requirements for assuming jurisdiction under sub-section (1) of Section 153C therefore are that the Assessing Officer is satisfied that any money, bullion, jewellery or other valuable article or thing or books of account or documents seized or requisitioned belongs or belong to a person other than ....
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....lled any action taken under section 153C of the Act stands vitiated." 18. Facts being vitally different, the ratio laid down in the said decision would not apply in the present case. In the present case, the set of documents relied upon by the Revenue pertain to sale deeds executed by the petitioners in favour of the purchases viz., M/s. Sanghvi Infracon Private Limited and agreements entered into between the erstwhile tenants of the said lands and the petitioners. As noted earlier, in some cases reliance is placed on the sale deeds alone and in some additionally on the receipts of payments. In the present case, we find that the documents viz., agreements between the tenants of the petitioners would certainly satisfy the requirement of Section 153C of the Act. We may, to support such conclusions, have a slightly closure look at such documents. These documents are worded similarly. We may, therefore, record narration found in one such document executed on 23rd August 2010 between Bansibhai Babubhai Chaudhary - the party on the first part and Kamleshbhai Dharamshibhai Patel and Sanjaykumar Dharamshibhai Patel - petitioners herein [as party of the second part]. In such document, it i....
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....land. We do not see how the petitioners can contend that simply because at a subsequent point of time they disposed of the property and transferred the title to the purchasers, the documents since to belong to them. The term "belong to" has not been defined in the Act. In the Webster's Third New Intl. Dictionary, the word, "belong" is described as, "to have relation or reference to a person or thing". In Advanced Law Lexicon by P. Ramanatha Aiyar [3rd Edition], the term, "belong" in context of Section 400 IPC means, "implied something more than the idea of casual association; it involves a notion of continuity and indicates a more or less intimate connection with a body of persons extending over a period of time sufficiently long to warrant the inference that the person affected was identified himself with a band, the common purpose of which is the habitual commission of dacoity." 21. The document executed between the erstwhile tenants of the petitioners regarding eviction of the tenants upon acceptance of sizeable payment by the petitioners definitely thus belong to the petitioners. It may be that as an evidence of passing on vacant and peaceful possession of the property, th....