1973 (11) TMI 2

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....lleged by him to be belonging to his brother, Satish Kumar, from Ambala to Batala. He was intercepted near the Beas river by the Customs officer and was forcibly taken along with the driver, Gurnam Singh, to the Customs House at Amritsar at 6 a.m. The petitioner was searched and so also his driver and the customs people took into possession Rs. 93,500 in Indian currency, 10 gold sovereigns and the car. On the 24th August, 1970, the petitioner was produced before a Duty Magistrate at Amritsar and was granted bail. In the meantime, the Customs department took proceedings under section 110(2) and extended the period of issuing of the show-cause notice under section 124 of the Customs Act, 1962. These proceedings were challenged in this court i....

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....d to get hold of the money under section 132 of the Income-tax Act. The second contention, though not set up in the petition, is that the action taken by the income-tax authorities under section 132 would militate or set at naught the provisions of section 110(2) of the Customs Act. It is the validity of these contentions that we are called upon to determine. So far as the first contention is concerned, the matter is not res integra. It is in fact concluded by the decision of this court in Commissioner of Income-tax v. Ramesh Chander. The following observations in this case fully support the contention of the learned counsel : " I have come to the conclusion that the search and seizure warrants issued under sub-section (1) of section ....

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....bed in the Code of Criminal Procedure. As such Ramesh Chander's case will not govern the present case. We are unable to accept this contention because the learned judges in that case proceeded to quash the authorisation and search warrants issued under section 132 of the Income-tax Act on two independent grounds and one of them was that the money was not in the possession of Ramesh Chander. However, the second ground, which also prevailed with the learned judges, namely, that the money was case property, and, therefore, it could not be returned unless the provisions of Chapter XLIII of the Criminal Procedure Code were complied with. This ground is equally available to the petitioner in view of the mandatory provisions of section 110(2) of t....