TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2025 (11) TMI 997
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
....to as 'the Act') for the Assessment Year (AY) 2018-2019. 2. The Revenue has raised the following grounds of appeal: "(a) The Ld.CIT(A) has erred in law and on facts in deleting the addition of Rs. 63,84,998/- u/s 68 of the Act in respect of cash payment. Despite furnishing ledger copies and bank statements, the assessee failed to produce transportation bills, weighment slips, gate register, stock register of other third-party documents evidencing actual movement and delivery of goods to establish the genuineness of transaction. (b) The appellant craves leave to add, alter and/or to amend all or any ground before the final hearing of the appeal." 3. The brief facts of the case are that the assessee firm, M/s. Maheshwa....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
.... racket or to establish the genuineness of the sales, the Assessing Officer held that the assessee had taken accommodation entries of bogus sales aggregating Rs. 63,84,998/-. Consequently, the said sum was treated as unexplained cash credit under section 68 of the Act and added to the total income of the assessee. 4. In appeal before CIT(Appeals), the assessee submitted that the addition made by the Assessing Officer was based solely on suspicion and general findings of the Investigation Wing without any direct evidence linking the assessee to any accommodation entry provider. The assessee contended that the transactions with Kushal Tradelink Ltd. were genuine sales duly recorded in its books and supported by bills, bank statements, and ....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
....73] 87 ITR 349 (SC), Umacharan Shaw & Bros. v. CIT [1959] 37 ITR 271 (SC), and Lalchand Bhagat Ambica Ram v. CIT [1959] 37 ITR 288 (SC), the CIT(A) held that suspicion, conjectures, and surmises cannot take the place of evidence. Accordingly, it was held that the Assessing Officer had made the addition merely on the basis of general suspicion without any corroborative evidence. The CIT(A), therefore, deleted the addition of Rs. 63,84,998/- made under section 68 of the Act, holding that the assessee had satisfactorily explained the nature and source of the transaction. Grounds relating to levy of interest under sections 234B, 234C, and 234D were held to be consequential, and other grounds being general or premature were dismissed. Consequent....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
....icer primarily relied on the investigation report of the Investigation Wing, Ahmedabad, without bringing on record any direct evidence linking the assessee to the alleged racket or establishing that the assessee had paid cash in lieu of accommodation entries. The Assessing Officer also did not reject the books of account maintained by the assessee, which were duly audited, and there was no finding that the sales recorded therein were not genuine or that the purchases were unverifiable. The assessee, on the other hand, furnished copies of sale bills, ledger accounts, bank statements, and other relevant documents demonstrating that all transactions were conducted through banking channels and that no cash payments were made. We find that the C....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
.... party who claims it to be so. As it was the department which claimed that the amount of fixed deposit receipt belonged to the respondent firm even though the receipt had been issued in the name of B, the burden laid on the department to prove that the respondent was the owner of the amount despite the fact that the receipt was in the name of B. A simple way of discharging the onus and resolving the controversy was to trace the source and origin of the amount and find out its ultimate destination. So far as the source was concerned, there was no material on the record to show that the amount came from the coffers of the respondent-firm or that it was tendered in B Calcutta branch of the Central Bank, on behalf of the respondent. As regards ....
X X X X Extracts X X X X
X X X X Extracts X X X X
....e disregarded, and the sales recorded therein cannot be treated as bogus merely on the basis of third-party information without corroboration. The Hon'ble Apex Court in the case of Pr. CIT v. Shapoorji Pallonji and Co. Ltd.[2022] 141 taxmann.com 509/288 Taxman 661 held that merely on suspicion bases on information received from sales Tax authority, assessing officer could not make addition on account of bogus purchases without carrying out independent enquiry and affording opportunity to Assessee to convert statements made by seller. The Bombay High Court in the case of Principal Commissioner of Income-tax v. Vaman International (P.) Ltd. [2020] 422 ITR 520 (Bom) deleted the addition made by the Assessing Officer in the absence of any i....