TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2020 (1) TMI 541
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.... demands and Cenvat credit were proposed to be recovered along with interest and penalty of Rs. 60,98,791/-(Rupees Sixty Lakhs Ninety Eight Thousnad Seven Hundred Ninety One only) was imposed on appellant M/s.Bihar Raffia Industries Limited (BRIL) and also penalty of Rs. 20.00 Lakhs on it under the various provisions of Central Excise Act, 1944 and Rules made thereunder. A penalty of Rs. 10.00 Lakhs was imposed on Shri Trilok Chand Agarwal, Director of BRIL and Shri Suresh Kumar Agarwal, also Director of appellant No.1 under the provisions of Rule 26 of the Central Excise Rules, 2002. 2. Being aggrieved by the impugned order, the appellants have filed separate appeals. However, the appeals are being disposed of by this common order as it emanates from the same impugned order. 3. The facts of the case are that appellant company is engaged in manufacture of Poly Proplene Woven Sacks classifiable under Tariff Heading 3923.2390 of the First schedule to the Central Excise Tariff Act (CETA), 1985. For the manufacture of PP Woven Sacks, the Poly Proplene granules and Master Batch are required as the inputs. The officers of Central Excise visited the factory of the appellant (BRIL) o....
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.... on behalf of the appellants submits that no verification of stock was conducted by the officer during their visit on 15.09.2006. The stock verification report as annexure 'C' to the show cause notice represented to the stock of HDPE Sacks/PP Woven Sacks and PP granules and Master Batch in the factory of the main appellant. The stock verification report does not contain signature of Central Excise officer who has conducted the verification. The report was prepared by Shri Manoj Pandey, the worker of appellant factory as per the instruction of the visiting Central Excise officer which was signed by Shri Suman Kumar, Central Excise clerk and therefore in absence of signature by the Central Excise officer, the stock verification report is not reliable. In fact the Central Excise officers themselves never have verified any stock of the material lying in the factory including the finished goods, raw material and Master Batch. The verification report, which is prepared at the instance of departmental officer, by the employee of the main appellant cannot be stated to be stock verification report by the Central Excise officers. Reliance was placed on the decision of Tribunal in the case of....
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....submitted that the main appeal itself is contested on merit, there is no question of imposition of penalty on any other appellants, who were directors of the company. 10. Learned Authorized Representative appearing on behalf of the department however, supports the impugned order on the various grounds contained in the impugned order which included the shortages of both raw material and finished goods. 11. We have heard the rival submissions and also perused the records. 12. The issue involved in the present appeal is regarding the duty liability and denial of Cenvat credit on the stock of shortage noticed on account of raw material during the visit of Central Excise officers. Also, regarding the non-inclusion of sales tax collected under deferment scheme in the assessable value of excisable goods under section 4 of the Central Excise Act. As far as the second issue is concerned it has been brought to our notice that the same has been paid to the sales tax department after the scheme of deferment was over and thus there is no question of inclusion of the sale component of deferred payment of sales tax in the assessable value of the goods. This issue has been clarified by th....
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.... C.E. officers) that he was in overall control or that the directors of the two units were all his family members. The finding of common labour has been drawn from statements of some of the employees/workers, notwithstanding the fact (acknowledged by the Commissioner) that some of those statements had not been signed by any C.E. officer. In this connection, we have considered the case law which was cited by ld. Consultant in support of his argument that the unsigned statement were not reliable. In the cited case of State v. Yakub Ahmed [2000 (125) E.L.T. 113 (Bom.)], it was held by the High Court that statements not recorded by gazetted officer of Customs under Section 108 of the Customs Act were not admissible in evidence. We note that, by and large, the provisions of Section 108 ibid are pari materia to those of Section 14 of the Central Excise Act under which the above statements were recorded. The only difference between the two provisions appears to be that, while under Section 108 of the Customs Act 'any gazetted officer of Customs' shall have power to take evidence from any person, 'any Central Excise officer duly empowered by the Central Government in this behalf' shall hav....