2018 (11) TMI 1493

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.... by another in his sworn statement taken under Section 132(4) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 ('Act' for short). The facts disclose that the search proceedings under Section 158BC was carried out in the premises of one K.K.Lakshmanan. A sworn statement was taken from the said person who in the course of the statement deposed that an amount of Rs. 38 lakhs was given to one Ravi as "pakadi" for vacating a premises in which the said Ravi had been carrying on business and later, the assessee's wife and brother have been carrying on a business. 2. There was a search conducted in the premises of C.M.Ravi also, the assessee-respondent herein. No incriminating material was discovered. The statement was confronted to Ravi, the respondent he....

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....ecific paragraph which is extracted below, which goes against the Revenue: 8. As regards the second contention, we are in entire agreement with the learned Solicitor-General when he says that the Income Tax Officer is not fettered by technical rules of evidence and pleadings, and that he is entitled to act on material which may not be accepted as evidence in a court of law, but there the agreement ends; because it is equally clear that in making the assessment under subsection (3) of Section 23 of the Act, the Income Tax Officer is not entitled to make a pure guess and make an assessment without reference to any evidence or any material at all. There must be something more than bare suspicion to support the assessment under Section 23(3).....

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....held to be self serving and found to be incapable of dispelling the statutory presumption available under Section 132(4). We again emphasise that here the search proceedings were in the premises of yet another person and a sworn statement taken of that person. In O.Abdul Razak (supra), the deponent was the person on whose premises the search was conducted and the evidentiary value of the sworn statement made under Section 132(4) in the further proceedings taken on the basis of the search and seizure could not have been dispelled by a mere self serving retraction. The same rigor cannot apply to a sworn statement with respect to a payment made to another, who is alleged to have received amounts from the deponent. Without corroborating materia....