Investigation material linking three loan creditors to accommodation-entry providers, supported by admissions concerning management of bank accounts and income-tax files, established a sufficient nexus for reassessment; the challenge to reopening failed. Confirmations and bank records showing full repayment in the following financial year, together with no corresponding addition for loans from the same creditors in the succeeding year, meant the loans could not be treated as accommodation entries. The Tribunal deleted the bogus-loan addition, and the consequential unexplained-expenditure addition did not survive; the appeal was partly allowed.

Foreign salary earned by a non-resident and received in USD in an NRE account requires assessment of evidence establishing foreign employment, non-residential status, and receipt of salary. Passport entries, employment records, and NRE account details are material evidence and should be considered. The absence of foreign tax returns, a tax residency certificate, or proof of foreign tax payment does not alone warrant rejection of the claim where available records support it. Assessment should address these documents without treating foreign tax records as a mandatory condition.

BSE futures and options trade profits disclosed for tax were supported by contract notes, tax records, bank statements, annual reports, transaction statements and account confirmations. Treating those profits as unexplained cash credit requires material showing that the broker or counterparty was tainted; no such material was identified. The preponderance-of-probabilities assessment distinguished alleged pre-arranged reversal trades involving loss-making entities from profitable trades with no identified loss-making counterparty. The trades were accepted as genuine, resulting in deletion of the unexplained cash credit addition and the consequential alleged commission expenditure addition under Section 69C.

Penalty notices for concealment or furnishing inaccurate particulars must specify the exact charge and remove the inapplicable alternative; retaining both charges invalidates initiation. Similarly, search-penalty notices for undisclosed income must identify the applicable statutory clause because alternate clauses impose distinct conditions and consequences; non-specification makes the proceedings defective. Salary expenditure disallowed as allegedly non-genuine services was treated as requiring fact-based inquiry, but the related additions were restricted to 10% with consequential relief. Penalties based on defective notices were untenable.

The Faceless Penalty Scheme SOP assigns Chapter XXI penalty proceedings to the Penalty Unit. Once the Penalty Unit became operational, the transitional arrangement allowing the Assessment Unit to act as the Penalty Unit ceased to apply. Accordingly, the Assessment Unit lacked jurisdiction to impose penalties under section 271D for alleged cash contributions accepted from members. Penalty orders issued by the Assessment Unit after operationalisation of the Penalty Unit were quashed for want of jurisdiction, rendering the remaining grounds academic.

Agreement-date stamp-duty valuation under section 56(2)(vii)(b) is available only where a pre-registration agreement fixes the consideration for the property ultimately registered and the prescribed non-cash payment condition is met. An earlier booking for a different flat with an erstwhile developer does not meet those requirements where the registered agreement concerns a new flat and a new developer, absent a legally established linkage between earlier payments and the later consideration. The stamp-duty value applicable to the subsequently registered transfer therefore governed the addition for the difference in value.

Re-import exemption for an Indian-registered personal vehicle returning from travel abroad is not defeated by the absence of Section 51 export clearance where it lawfully left as a private conveyance under Chapter VI; containerisation for safe transit does not make it commercial cargo. Where electronic Bill of Entry filing is impossible because the owner lacks IEC or GSTIN, filing without those identifiers, including manual filing, must be permitted. Release remains subject to the prescribed bond, verification of claimed export benefits or drawback, and cooperation in adjudication.

Reverse burden of proof for notified gold is discharged when the carrier produces a delivery challan supporting lawful possession. The evidential burden then shifts to Revenue to prove foreign origin and smuggling. A town seizure, gold purity below 99.9%, and procurement records corroborated by GSTR-2A did not establish reasonable belief that the gold was smuggled. On those facts, confiscation was set aside and release of the gold was directed.

Beneficial owners exercising effective control over imported goods may be treated as importers and held liable for customs duty, interest, penalty and fine, including authorised signatories acting under powers of attorney for a deceased sole proprietor. Transaction value cannot be rejected merely on NIDB data unless evidence establishes that the declared price was not the price actually paid or payable, supported by comparable-goods analysis. Where quantity misdeclaration is admitted, duty may be recovered on undeclared goods at the declared value. Findings on live consignments cannot, without proof of undervaluation, justify enhancing assessable value of past cleared consignments or confiscating them. A substantial non-bona-fide quantity discrepancy may sustain penalty under Section 114AA, although other penalty and confiscation directions may fail.

DHA algae oil, when imported as an edible algae oil consisting of a mixture of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, is classified under Chapter 15 rather than as a separate chemically defined unsaturated fatty acid under Chapter 29. Under the General Rules of Interpretation, classification follows the tariff headings and relevant Chapter Notes; the presence of DHA or food-industry use does not alter that result. Chapter 21 does not describe oils. Classification under Chapter 15 precludes the claimed notification benefit and sustains consequential differential duty, interest and penalties for misclassification.

Optical transceivers that convert optical signals into electrical signals and vice versa, functioning only as network interface modules, are components or parts of Optical Transport Network products rather than complete Optical Transport Network products. They do not perform complete system functions such as OTN framing, multiplexing, forward error correction or operations, administration and maintenance. Classification therefore falls under CTI 8517 7090 rather than CTI 8517 6290. Because the customs exemption exclusion applies only to complete Optical Transport Network products, it does not cover these transceivers. The claimed exemption benefit remains available, and the Revenue's appeals were dismissed.

Company-name rectification under Section 16(1)(b) turns on whether the impugned name is identical with or too nearly resembles a registered trade mark, without requiring proof of likely deception or confusion. Competing names must be compared holistically, including phonetic and structural similarity, rather than by separating individual components. Applying that approach, "TOPLAD" was found too nearly to resemble "TOPLAND"; omitting "N" did not create sufficient visual or phonetic distinction for an Indian consumer of average intelligence. The rejection of rectification was set aside, and adoption of a non-resembling company name was required.

Under the PMLA, a charge-sheet alleging offences under the IPC and Explosive Substances Act may establish the scheduled offence required for attachment arising from illegal granite quarrying. Properties may be attached as value equivalent to proceeds of crime where claimed lawful sources remain unsubstantiated; acquisition before the alleged criminal period does not bar equivalent-value attachment. A person who has sold the attached property lacks standing to challenge its attachment. Fair market value is determined at acquisition or possession, not by guideline or present market value, though an incorrect valuation may be immaterial where alleged proceeds are independently quantified. Recorded risk of alienation may support provisional attachment without prior communication of reasons.

Merger of a drawee bank transfers its assets, liabilities and customer accounts to the resulting bank; it does not extinguish the account or invalidate a cheque drawn on it. The cheque recipient may present the cheque without fault despite the merger. Claims that the cheque was misplaced constitute a defence requiring trial, rather than a ground to quash cheque-dishonour proceedings. Account closure likewise does not justify quashing. Cheque-dishonour proceedings therefore continue, with the drawer retaining liberty to raise available defences during trial.

Provisional attachment, seizure, retention and freezing under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act cannot be sustained by relying on subsequent FIRs that were not part of the original proceedings. The original FIR alone formed the basis of the Provisional Attachment Orders, recorded Reasons to Believe, Original Complaints and Original Applications, and it no longer survived. Although subsequent FIRs were incorporated through an addendum to the ECIR and could disclose predicate offences, they could not validate the original attachment proceedings through later prosecution material. The confirmation orders were set aside; subsequent FIRs could support separate action after investigation.

Interest received by a co-operative society from co-operative banks on surplus funds falls within the deduction available under Section 80P(2)(d) of the Income-tax Act. The deduction applies to such interest income, with the analysis relying on the statutory provision and supporting Supreme Court and coordinate-bench rulings. Co-operative societies may therefore claim the deduction for interest earned on deposits held with co-operative banks.

For capital-gains exemption on investment in agricultural land, the transfer date is reckoned from an agreement to sell where substantial rights have been transferred and part consideration paid, rather than solely from execution of the sale deed. Investment made from advance sale consideration may therefore qualify for Section 54B relief when assessed by reference to that earlier transfer date. Revision under Section 263 cannot rest on the contrary premise that the one-year investment period necessarily runs from the sale-deed date.

Interest paid on unsecured loans from directors for business purposes is deductible under Section 36(1)(iii) where no diversion of borrowed funds to non-business use is established. Expenditure specifically claimed under that provision cannot be disallowed under Section 37(1). An overdraft secured against a director's fixed deposits did not, on the relevant facts, establish a breach of deposit rules. The interest disallowance was therefore deleted and the expenditure allowed.

Section 69A applies only when the source of money remains unexplained. Cash deposits of specified bank notes during demonetisation may be treated as explained business receipts where books of account, cash book, VAT returns, sales records and bank statements demonstrate cash sales and collection of trade debts, and no defects, suppressed sales, irregularities or abnormal variations are established. Acceptance of specified bank notes before 31 December 2016 was not prohibited; the material question was whether the deposit source was established. On these facts, addition as unexplained money, including related special-rate treatment, was unsustainable.

Cash recoveries from accepted sundry-debtor balances cannot be treated as unexplained without material discrediting the genuineness of those balances. The money-lending business, opening debtor balances and related interest income had been accepted in an earlier scrutiny assessment. Particulars identifying the debtors and recovery dates supported the cash receipts, while no evidence showed that the opening balances were fictitious or that the business was not genuine. The receipts were therefore accepted as debtor recoveries and the unexplained-cash addition was deleted.