Law:

Section:

Section 132 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, read with 12 of the Income-tax Rules, 1962 - Search and seizure - General - Whether unless there is a statutory prohibition, a person against whom action is being taken under section 132, is entitled to inspect record of proceedings and to obtain copies of order passed in those proceedings - Held, yes - Whether, in view of rule 12, Commissioner should record reasons before issuing warrants of authorisation to carry out a search and seizure and, therefore, any search and seizure made in contravention of rule 12 would be illegal - Held, yes FACTS The assessee-petitioner was a private limited company engaged in the transport business. The income-tax department carried out a raid at the business premises of the assessee-company as well as the residential premises of its cashier, and seized account books and other papers and documents. The assessee asked the Commissioner for the document seized but same was refused. Subsequently the assessee made an application to the Commissioner for inspection of documents and returns of them. However, the documents and account books seized were not returned to the assessee for a long time. Therefore, the assessee filed the instant writ petition challenging seizure of the account books and the documents on grounds that the Commissioner did not record any reason before issuing the search warrants; that the books of accounts were retained beyond the period allowed under the law without the sanction of the Commissioner and that the sanction by the Commissioner to retain the books of accounts beyond the initial period specified in the section was not communicated to the petitioner. HELD The Commissioner appeared to be labouring under a great misconnection with regard to the scope of section 132. The seizure of the books of account of a businessman is a serious encroachment upon his fundamental right to carry on business. Such an encroachment, of course, is permitted by law in public interest. But it is necessary that the powers under section 132 as also under section 131 should be exercised strictly in accordance with the law and the principles of natural justice. The assessee asked for the…

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/digixyei/sldsystempk.com/view/master-layout/view_case.php on line 492