AI OCR 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2025 (2) TMI 1286
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....duty and imposition of penalties, the appellant has filed this appeal. 2. During the period from December 2005 to September 2006, the appellant, carrying on business in the name and style of "D. D. Impex", imported 4 consignments of spares for heavy earth moving equipment, classifiable under Chapter 84 of the Customs Tariff Act from overseas supplier EB McSun Pte Ltd., Singapore. The said goods were imported against proper shipping documents, including commercial invoices, and bills of entry drawn in terms of the Act. The subject consignments were imported and cleared following assessment and inspection thereof by the Customs authorities, without any objection being raised in respect of the declarations made by the appellant in the respective bills of entry. 2.1. However, after 3 to 4 years following the importation of the said goods, the DRI officers intercepted the Managing Director of EB McSun, namely, Mr. Lim Eng Bee, in Bangalore on 27.11.2009, on the suspicion that he may have been involved in facilitating undervaluation of goods imported into India in collusion with several buyers in India. In the statements recorded under section 108 of the Customs Act, 1962, Mr. Lim ....
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....cated documents. Accordingly, the appellant submits that based on such unsigned documents, transaction value cannot be enhanced. In support of this claim, the appellant relied upon the following decisions: (i) Commissioner of Customs, Mumbai Vs. Bussa Overseas Properties Ltd. [2007 (216) ELT 659 (S.C.)] (ii) Commissioner of Customs, Visakhapatnam Vs. Truwoods Pvt. Ltd. [2016 (331) ELT 15 (S.C.)] 3.2. Regarding the four computer printout invoices relied upon in the impugned order, the appellant submits that none of them satisfy the requirements of Section 138C(2) of the Act for being treated as a document which is admissible in any proceedings as per Section 138C(1) of the Act. Furthermore, it is the appellant's contention that the invoices purportedly extracted from the storage devices of Mr. Lim Eng Bee were not subsequently shown to him nor any statement obtained from him for the purposes of clarification as to the authenticity of the documents; Rather, the opinion of Mr. Abhijit Ray Burman, who neither prepared the invoices nor owned the devices wherefrom the same were allegedly extracted, was sought for the purposes of clarification instead. Accordingly, th....
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....ity under Section 138B of the Act. In this connection reliance is placed upon the following decisions: (i) Hi Tech Abrasives Ltd. Vs. Commissioner of C.Ex & Cus, Raipur [2018 (362) E.L.T. 961 (Chhathisgarh)] (ii) Basudev Garg Vs. Commissioner of Customs [2013 (294) E.L.T. 353 (Del.)] (iii) Gobinda Das Vs. Commissioner of Custom s(Prev.) [(2023) 7 Centax 201(T-Cal)] 3.5. The appellant submits that there is not a single piece of evidence disclosed in the impugned order in respect of any extra/additional payment made by the appellant to the foreign supplier of the subject imported goods; significantly, no details, including bank details or the exact amount sent by the appellant or as to how and on what manner such payments were made, has been disclosed either in the Show Cause Notice or in the impugned order. It is also submitted that no relied upon documents which evidence such payments by the appellant in any manner are contained in the relied upon documents forming part of the impugned Show Cause Notice. The appellant contends that the Ld. Commissioner in the impugned order has failed to appreciate that assumptions and presumptions and/or suspicions ca....
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.... the Act read with the related provisions of the Valuation Rules; the appellant had also procured and submitted certificates from buyers to whom they had supplied the said imported goods, providing details of the value/price at which the same were sold to them. They submit that it can be seen therefrom that the local sales value is largely consistent with the valuation reflected in the declared invoices and bills of entry against which the appellant had imported the goods; No reason or basis has been disclosed in the impugned order as to why the said evidences produced by the appellant have been ignored in the impugned The appellant thus contends that this has vitiated the impugned order and has rendered the same untenable and unsustainable and that the principle in this regard has been laid down by the Apex Court, inter alia, in Commissioner of Customs, Calcutta v. South India Television (P) Ltd. [2007 (214) E.L.T. 3 (S.C.)] 3.8. In view of the above submissions, the appellant has prayed for setting aside the demands of differential Customs duty, along with interest, and penalty confirmed in the impugned order. 4. The Ld. Authorized Representative of the Revenue submits that....
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....was serving as the agent of EB McSun in India during the said period. The appellant has questioned the veracity of the documents and admissibility of the said statements as evidence in this case. 6.2. We find that the laptop recovered from Mr. Lim Eng Bee was found to contain 4 soft copies of commercial invoices allegedly raised in the name of the appellant and issued in relation to the subject consignments. The appellant has submitted that these documents are unsigned and unattested photocopies. We observe that it is a settled law that no presumption can be raised under Section 139 of the Act in respect of such unsigned and unauthenticated documents. We agree with the submission of the appellant that based on such unsigned documents, transaction value cannot be enhanced. We observe that this view has been held in the case of Commissioner of Customs, Mumbai Vs. Bussa Overseas Properties Ltd. [2007 (216) E.L.T. 659 (S.C.)]. The relevant part of the said decision is reproduced below: - "The short question involved in these civil appeals is whether the Department was right in adding GBP1.56 lakhs to the declared value of GBP6.26 lakhs approximately. In the present case, th....
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....the law that unless the requirement of Section 65B of the Evidence Act is satisfied, such evidence cannot be admitted in any proceedings. We note that the Section 138C of the Customs Act is parimateria to Section 658 of the Evidence Act. Consequently, the evidence in the form of computer printouts, etc., recovered during the course of investigation can be admitted in the present proceedings, only subject to the satisfaction of the sub-section (2) of Section 138C Ibid. This refers to the certificate from a responsible person in relation to the operation of the relevant laptop/computer. After perusing the record of the case, we note that in respect of the electronic documents in the form of computer printouts from the seized laptops and other electronic devices, have not been accompanied by a certificate as required by Section 138C(2) ibid as above. In the absence of such certificate, in view of the unambiguous language in the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court (supra), the said electronic documents cannot be relied upon by the Revenue for confirmation of differential duty on the appellant. In the present case, the main evidence on which, Revenue has sought to establish the ca....