2018 (11) TMI 1180

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....ioner, high pitched assessment proceedings. When the petitioner took the matters in appeal, the appellate authority passed a conditional order: the petitioner to pay 15% of the demand as a pre-condition to having further proceedings stayed. Aggrieved, the petitioner Company has filed this writ petition. 2. Sri Joseph Markose, the learned Senior Counsel for the petitioner, has submitted that though the Company has been an assessee since 2002, it has faced no scrutiny. In 2011, the Company's Director complained to the Central Bureau of Investigation, ACB, Cochin (CBI), about the demands by certain officials of the Income Tax Department for illegal gratification. Acting on the complaint, the CBI has laid a trap, the Senior Counsel furth....

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.... CBI have nothing to do with the scrutiny and assessment proceedings. He referred to the Company's allegations: the Company was never touched until 2011 when its Director complained about the graft. To refute that allegation, the Standing Counsel submits that the assessing authority does not select the assessees for scrutiny; it is a system-generated random choice. Perhaps the petitioner, according to him, had been lucky until then. 7. The learned Standing Counsel has drawn my attention to the Ext.P8 conditional orders in W.P.(C)No.35228/2018, Ext.P14 in W.P. (C)No.35229/12018, and Ext.P13 in W.P.(C)No.35301/2018. He then stresses that the orders are well-reasoned and require no interference. In this regard, he also submits that the Depa....

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....omplained about a crime: the crime of graft. An organisation like CBI has registered a crime after laying the trap. Perhaps accidentally, though, the company that complained has been in the departmental crosshairs ever since. As the learned Senior Counsel has put it, the conditional stay in an appeal is only an interim arrangement. The repeated assessments and the preconditions may have left the Company with the feeling of victimization. Its Directors have opened their mouth against the graft or alleged graft in the Department. Normally, it pays to complain. Here, the complainant is, it seems, made to pay. So the Department could have taken a lenient view to inspire confidence in the Company that it need not end up as a victim only because ....