Developmental and composite works, including horticulture, landscaping, beautification, road laying and paving, are distinguished from maintenance or repair because they create or improve assets rather than preserve existing assets. Composite material-and-labour contracts cannot be artificially split for taxation under Maintenance or Repair Service without segregating taxable and non-taxable elements. Material values may be excluded subject to documentary verification, while qualifying road-related services receive the stated exemption and retrospective relief. Extended limitation and related penalties require fraud, collusion, wilful suppression or intent to evade tax; classification, valuation or exemption disputes alone do not establish those conditions.

Rule 9(1)(bb) of the Cenvat Credit Rules, 2004 restricts credit on supplementary invoices only where additional service tax has become recoverable from the service provider due to fraud, collusion, wilful misstatement, suppression of facts, or intentional contravention. Recoverability requires proceedings and confirmation of a service-tax demand. Voluntary payment of tax, interest and penalty after investigation, without a show-cause notice or adjudicated demand against the provider, does not meet that condition. As supplementary invoices are prescribed credit documents, Cenvat credit remains admissible in those circumstances.

Service tax on royalty paid under reverse charge for mining rights depends on the mining lease terms and the date the right was granted. Before 1 April 2016, Government services generally fell within the negative list; following amendment, Government services supplied to business entities became taxable. Without the mining lease agreements, the factual basis to determine the applicable regime was unavailable. The demand order was set aside and the matter remitted for fresh adjudication after examination of the leases under the applicable law.

Anticipatory bail in a money-laundering investigation was unavailable where investigation material alleged that the petitioner facilitated a sub-contract to an entity connected with his son and that proceeds were transferred to family members. The absence of direct credit to the petitioner's account was not determinative, as further investigation was required to trace the money trail and pre-arrest bail does not permit conclusive assessment of evidence. The statutory twin conditions for bail could not be satisfied. Medical records also did not show a continuing serious condition, emergency, or urgent intervention warranting protection from arrest.

Inherent jurisdiction under PMLA is discussed alongside the availability of revisional remedies, mandatory pre-cognizance hearing requirements in complaint proceedings, limits on judicial remand beyond fifteen days, PMLA bail conditions, and allegations of transnational conspiracy. The text reports that the cognizance process must restart after affording the petitioner a pre-cognizance hearing, while custody and bail are to be determined under the applicable statutory procedure. It further records dismissal of the Special Leave Petitions, with liberty to seek regular bail before the High Court.

A clerical rectification that only corrects the pronouncement date and does not alter substantive findings does not restart the appellate limitation period under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. A Section 9 application is governed by the three-year limitation period under Article 137; balance confirmations extend time only where they are proved, unequivocal acknowledgments made before limitation expires. Unproved confirmations containing inconsistent liability figures did not establish a valid acknowledgment. Correspondence raising reconciliation, set-off and ledger objections before the demand notice established a genuine pre-existing dispute, independently preventing insolvency proceedings. The insolvency process could not be invoked for a stale and disputed operational debt.

Section 60(5)(c) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code permits the Adjudicating Authority to protect a pre-existing access right where post-CIRP obstruction directly affects inspection, saleability and value realisation of liquidation assets. Access recorded in non-agricultural permission and openly used for about two decades supported a subsisting prescriptive right of way under the Indian Easements Act; an alternative route over third-party land was not legally secure. The obstruction was therefore connected with and prejudicial to liquidation, and measures keeping the access unobstructed were sustained. A dissent considered that proof of a contested prescriptive easement required civil-court adjudication with leave under the Code.

Discounted invoices acquired by a bank under a TReDS reverse-factoring arrangement remain operational debt where the bank pays suppliers for pre-existing trade receivables and does not disburse funds to the corporate debtor for the time value of money. Assignment changes the payee, not the nature of the underlying trade payable, so the bank stands in the suppliers' position as an operational creditor. An alleged error in recording a concession does not affect the result where classification is independently determined on merits. A creditor that delays filing its claim in the directed operational-creditor category need not be included in an approved plan, particularly after full implementation, payments, and dissolution of the monitoring committee.

A creditor that was informed its claim had been classified as contingent during the corporate insolvency resolution process had to challenge that classification before the Adjudicating Authority. Seeking modification of an interim stay before another forum did not replace the need for a timely challenge within the insolvency process. Once the resolution plan was approved, fully implemented, and the insolvency proceeding closed, it could not be disturbed by claims that had not been timely pursued. The post-implementation challenge to the resolution plan was therefore not maintainable.

An approved resolution plan binds all creditors, including those who did not file claims, and extinguishes claims that are not included in the plan. Continuing execution proceedings based on a pre-approval money decree would undermine the insolvency resolution framework. Deposit of the decretal amount is not invariably required to obtain a stay of a money decree where exceptional circumstances exist. The binding effect of the approved resolution plan and the statutory consequences of Section 31 constitute such circumstances, supporting a stay of the decree's operation, execution and implementation pending final disposal of the appeal.

Criminal liability of a statutory auditor for account-related defaults requires the statutory status or specific management charge contemplated by the relevant provisions; an auditor outside those categories cannot be prosecuted for non-compliance concerning the company's accounts. False-statement liability requires a knowingly material false statement or omission, and cannot rest merely on failure to report accounting-standard non-compliance. Penal liability for audit-reporting failures further requires a pleaded and supportable wilful default; qualifications in audit reports and alleged inadequate enquiries may indicate lack of due care but do not establish wilfulness. The proceedings were therefore unsustainable on the pleaded allegations.

Police assistance for eviction or securing possession cannot be used while a purchaser's application for vacant possession remains pending before the Company Court, unless the Company Judge directs otherwise. The pending application must receive expeditious consideration. The directions preserve the Company Court's control over possession and prevent police-assisted eviction without its express order.

Confiscation of gold brought into India as baggage falls within the statutory exclusion from the Tribunal's appellate jurisdiction. Appeals concerning such baggage matters cannot be pursued before the Tribunal; the prescribed remedy is revision before the Revisionary Authority of the Government of India. The jurisdictional bar determines the appropriate forum for challenging the confiscation order.

Departmental appeals involving anti-dumping duty are subject to the prescribed monetary threshold under the Government litigation policy. Where the duty involved falls below that threshold, the Revenue's appeal is not pursued and is dismissed; the related cross-objection is disposed of accordingly.

Absolute confiscation applied to gold recovered from conscious possession because, as notified goods, the statutory burden to prove lawful importation, acquisition or possession was not discharged; the gold was confiscated under the Customs Act. Indian currency was confiscated as sale proceeds of smuggled gold where records, statements and unexplained possession linked it to bullion dealings. Penalty was sustained against the person knowingly involved in transporting and dealing with smuggled gold, supported by recovery, statements and transaction records. Penalties against a family member and an employee were set aside because relationship or employment, without cogent corroborative evidence of conscious and active participation, does not establish abetment or dealing with confiscable goods.

Derivative penal liability for abetment under the Customs Act cannot survive where the principal allegation against the importer fails. The imported components, without an electric motor and battery, did not have the essential character of complete electrical tricycles under Rule 2(a) of the General Rules for Interpretation. They were correctly declared as parts/components, and the classification dispute involved no misdeclaration. As confiscation, differential duty and penalties against the importer were unsustainable, no underlying contravention remained to support a penalty against the alleged abettor. The penalty was therefore set aside.

Customs Broker licence revocation requires a valid offence report under the Customs Brokers Licensing Regulations, 2018; proceedings founded only on findings in the exporter's separate adjudication are unsustainable. A Customs Broker processing exports later alleged to be overvalued does not breach its regulatory obligations without evidence of knowledge, connivance, or involvement. Compliance with KYC requirements, reliance on apparently genuine client and government-issued documents, and filing shipping bills assessed and cleared by Customs support absence of breach. The Broker is not required to independently investigate export valuation where documents appear authentic. Revocation, security forfeiture, and penalty lack legal basis where statutory initiation requirements and a proven regulatory breach are absent.

Penalties for aiding and abetting customs-duty evasion under Section 112(a)(ii) require evidence that the Customs Broker and its G-Card holder had prior knowledge of the importer's misdeclaration and materially assisted it. Processing import documents and filing Bills of Entry based on documents supplied by the importer, without corroborative evidence of knowledge of quantity misdeclaration or participation in duty evasion, does not establish aiding or abetting. On the stated analysis, the penalties were unsustainable and set aside.

Unsecured loans and corresponding interest could not be treated as unexplained where the assessee produced lender confirmations, tax returns, bank statements, ledger accounts and financial statements. The material established lender identity, financial capacity and transaction genuineness, with loans routed through banking channels and interest paid after tax deduction at source. The Department did not disprove this evidence or substantiate allegations that lenders' sources were non-genuine. Selective additions were also inconsistent with acceptance of most of the same loan transactions. For the relevant years, the assessee was not required to prove the source of lenders' funds. The loan and interest additions were therefore deleted.

Reassessment based solely on an Insight Portal chart, without the Assessing Officer obtaining, examining, or identifying underlying seized material linking the assessee to alleged cash payment, lacks a rational nexus with escaped income and reflects borrowed satisfaction; the Section 148 notice was therefore invalid. An addition for alleged on-money payment cannot rest on incomplete, unproduced and uncorroborated material that neither identifies the assessee nor establishes cash payment or connection with the purchased property; the Section 69 addition was unsustainable and deleted. Independent application of mind to material with a live link to escapement is required for reassessment.