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2015 (12) TMI 1504 - AT - Income TaxUndisclosed receipts through post office - source of information - CIT(a) deleted the addition - Held that:- CIT (A) rightly observed that third party information is important for the purposes of assessment but it should be corroborated by relevant documentary evidences otherwise it cannot be acted upon to saddle the assessee with additions. Though the source of the information is a government organization, like in this case is a post office, the correctness of that information is countered by the assessee with by another piece of evidence emanating from the very same source, then the Post Master is duty bound to establish that the information supplied by him is correct by production of documents from where he has supplied the information to AO at the first place. In this regard, the ld. CIT (A) has noted that the information supplied by the post office to the AO was on monthly basis whereas it was supplied to the assessee on dayto- day basis. Thus, the contention of the assessee that there can be posting or compilation or totaling error cannot be ruled out unless the AO had called for the records from the post office and verified the same. Without doing the said exercise, the AO ought not to have made the addition simply by relying on the information given by the post office, when the assessee also has documentary evidence certified by the Post Master to support its claim. We further take note of the fact that the Post Master issued the certificates duly signed and stamped on day-to-day basis in the regular course of its business and which was the basis of audited books of accounts maintained by the assessee. We find force in the contention of the ld. AR that without rejecting the books of accounts maintained by the assessee company, the addition made simply on the basis of information from the post office without being corroborated or verified cannot be accepted. We further find that from a perusal of the statement of facts filed by the AO along with the appeal, vide letter dated 17.02.2005, the post office has brought to the notice of the AO that the documents for a period from 1999 to March 2002 has been weeded out. It was clearly mentioned that documents pertaining to period from April 2003 to July 2004 comprising of 1353 pages has been taken away by the Investigation Officer, C.O. Dalanwala, Dehradun on 04.09.2004. So, from the said letter, we can safely infer that records pertaining to the relevant assessment year i.e. 2003-04 (financial year 2002-03) was available with the concerned post office. We find that the AO has not taken any pains to call for the records before he passed the assessment order dated 31.03.2006 which he could have easily done. Further, we find that pursuant to the ld. CIT (A)'s seeking remand report, the AO simply stated vide letter dated 24.11.2008 that records of FY 2002-03 are not available. When insisted by the ld. CIT (A) vide letter dated 27.02.2009 a copy of statement on oath of Shri Lalit Mohan Joshi, the Post Master was recorded on 25.02.2009 which has been incorporated verbatim at page 3 of the ld. CIT (A)'s order wherein he simply states that the information given by them must have been based on the basis of cash book and money order payment book and could not be based on wrong facts and the documents have been weeded out. So, we find that the AO, during the original assessment, could have summoned the documents and could have verified the veracity of the statement of the assessee qua the information supplied by the post office. Without doing so, the AO could not have made the addition. We find that though the documents for the next assessment year were taken away by the Investigation Officer, C.O., Dalanwala, Dehradun for the period April 2003 to July 2004 comprising of 1353 pages, we find that the AO in the next assessment year i.e. 2004-05 has not made any addition and has accepted the return filed by the assessee - Decided against revenue
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