TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1999 (12) TMI 828
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....nbsp; Date of maturity Rs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Raj Kumar 15,000 15-12-1995 15-3-1998 Raj Kumar 15,000 20-12-1995 20-3-1998 Vimal Kumar 12,000 20-12-1995 20-3-1998 Dina Nath 6,500 18-5-1992 18-5-1997 Yash Kumar 15,000  ....
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.... the then chief manager, Mr. L. K. Dham, to encash the FDRs and issue a draft in favour of the Income-tax Department in respect of their proceeds. It is alleged that he was not permitted to take any legal opinion or consult any other officer and was held in illegal confinement in his office by respondent No. 3 who insisted on compliance of her verbal order to hand over the drafts of the proceeds of the FDRs. It is under these circumstances that the bank claims to have encashed the FDRs and handed over the proceeds to respondent No. 3. The bank has also stated that the information to this effect was sent to all the affected parties on the same day. The bank also claims to have written to the Assistant Director of Income-tax on March 4, 1997, requesting her to remit back the amount of Rs. 4,10,074 in respect of 24 FDRs (including the FDRs of the petitioners) on the ground that the same did not belong to the Anand Group and as such could not have been encashed and seized by her. A reminder to this effect was sent on April 18, 1997, The bank also claims to have advised the owners of the said FDRs to lodge their claims with the Assistant Director of Income-tax. In fact vide letter dated....
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....ms in respect of the FDRs were almost blank. The same contained only the names of the persons without any proper address or parentage or age of the concerned persons. The forms were mostly blank in respect of the particulars of the person who had introduced the holders of the FDRs to the bank. It is also on record that on the date of search, account opening forms in respect of many FDRs were missing. In fact there is a letter written by the bank dated January 28, 1997, where not Only this has been confirmed but it has also been admitted by the bank that the FDRs were opened at the instance of Mr. Sanjay Anand of the Anand Group. It would be relevant to reproduce a part of the said letter as under : "Regarding FDRs in benami names, we submit that as the addresses given were not proper and their names provided in your list of 78 persons does not contain their names. It could not be detected. It was only on telephone the names were made available to us by you and the same were confirmed by us to your staff, madam, we would like you to know why and how it happened ? One day Mr. Sanjay Anand came to our bank and requested for some account opening forms of deposit and said that the sa....
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.... FDR accounts. The same appear to have been opened at the instance of some person known to the bank. In fact on a query from the Bench, the bank manager frankly conceded that he did not know the petitioners personally and even did not know about their whereabouts. When further queried as to how he would have identified the person to whom the payment would eventually have to be made, he stated that the signatures on the forms would be tallied. It is interesting to note that the petitioners claim to have acquired the knowledge of encashment of their FDRs by respondent No. 3 when they approached the bank for claiming the proceeds on maturity which is in March, 1998, in all but one FDR. On the other hand, the bank in its written statement has denied this charge vide para. No. 5 of the written statement and has maintained that the petitioners were informed immediately on the same day when respondent No. 3 had seized the proceeds of the FDRs on February 3, 1997. However, no letter addressed to the petitioners in this behalf is available on the record. There is a letter dated March 25, 1997, addressed to Ved Parkash Anand and Raj Pal Anand in which it is mentioned that a letter dated Febr....
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....not in dispute. However, we are of the view that respondent No. 3 had no jurisdiction to order the encashment of the FDRs and recover the proceeds thereof under section 132(1) of the Act. It is now a well settled position of law that the credit in the bank is a valuable thing and is liable to attachment. However, such action can only be taken under sub-section (3) of section 132 of the Act by passing a restraint order. Counsel for the petitioners has placed reliance on the decision of the Patna High Court in Santosh Verma v. Union of India [1991] 189 ITR 549 in this behalf. It would be apt to notice the relevant passage of this report from page 552 as under : "It is no doubt well-settled that an amount in credit with the banker is always liable to attachment. An action in that behalf can be taken under sub-section (3) of section 132 of the Act. That provision contemplates a prohibitory order not to deal with the monies deposited by the petitioner except with the prior permission of the authority. Such an order would have been undoubtedly justified but the bank, in my opinion, could not have been directed under section 132(3) of the Act to convert the amount deposited by the peti....