TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1988 (9) TMI 3
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....re Code, 1973, to quash the trial. Facts briefly are : The respondent had filed a complaint against the petitioner and 19 others for the above offence relating to forging tax deduction certificates issued by the Madras Race Club at Madras an Uthagamandalam, forging and submitting false income returns and obtaining refund orders of income-tax deducted from the prize-winners, encashing the same and appropriating them to themselves. The petitioner is an income-tax practitioner, while the co-accused are his father, his brothers, his mother, his wife, all of the undivided family and the typist and others employed under him in his office as also certain employees in the race club. All the accused had conspired together to obtain such refund or....
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....e petitioner is an income-tax practitioner and section 277 of the Income-tax Act will not apply to him since the same would apply only to an assessee. (2) Sanction for prosecution for offences under the Indian Penal Code has not been given but has been accorded only for prosecution under section 277 of the Income-tax Act. (3) The respondent is not competent to file a complaint, since he is the Chief Commissioner (Administration), who, in 1985, was not competent to file a complaint. (4) Notice under section 276 CC of the Income-tax Act has not been given and hence prosecution is premature. (5) The assessees had not been residing within the jurisdiction of the Chief Commissioner who has, therefore, no territorial jurisdiction to f....
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....s not used in reference only to an assessee as defined in the Act. The complaint clearly shows that the petitioner is not tried for anything done by him in his capacity as an income-tax practitioner. On the other hand, the allegation is that the petitioner, in conspiracy with the other accused and certain employees of the race club, applied for duplicate tax deduction certificates in the names of winners, forged the signatures of the original winners, made false documents and filed the returns containing false declarations and forged signatures and, on the basis of all these, obtained tax refund certificates, which were encashed by them. The assessees had not come into the picture at all. Their names had been used by the petitioner and the ....
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.... is stated thus : " The respondent is also the Commissioner of Income-tax, Tamil Nadu No. 1, Madras and the complaint was being filed at the instance of the Commissioner of Income-tax, Tamil Nadu, Commissioner of Income-tax, Tamil Nadu IV, Commissioner of Income-tax, Tamil Nadu V, Commissioner of Income-tax, Bombay City X, and Commissioner of Income-tax, Trivandrum, in whose jurisdiction the offence under the Income-tax Act had been committed." The Supreme Court in T. S. Baliah v. T. S. Rangachari, ITO [1969] 72 ITR 787, while explaining the words "at the instance of" occurring in section 52 of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922 (its parallel provision in the present Act being 279), observed as follows (at page 795): "There is no stat....
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.... 5 : It is next contended that the assessees had not been residing within the jurisdiction of the respondent, and that, therefore, he has no competence to file a complaint. As already stated earlier, in paragraph 3 of the complaint, it is clearly mentioned that a complaint is being filed at the instance of the different Commissioners of Income-tax of different circles in whose jurisdiction the offence under the Income-tax Act had been committed. It is also stated that the respondent, besides being the Commissioner of Income-tax, Tamil Nadu Circle I, is also the administrative head of the Income-tax Department in Tamil Nadu and the Income-tax Officers and other income-tax authorities are administratively subordinate to him. The Act does n....