TMI Blog2006 (7) TMI 133X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... d amount as income of the assessee is bad in law. - - - - - Dated:- 26-7-2006 - Judge(s) : P. G. AGARWAL., SMT. A. HAZARIKA. JUDGMENT The judgment of the court was delivered by P.G. Agarwal J.- Heard Mr. D.K. Mishra, learned senior advocate appearing for the appellant, and Mr. U. Bhuyan, learned counsel for the Income-tax Department. This is an appeal under section 260A of the Income-tax Act, 1961, directed against the order dated March 15, 2002, passed by the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal, Guwahati, in I.T.A. No. 476 (Gau) of 1993. For the assessment year 1989-90, the assessee Mohanlal Sethi of Paona Bazar, Imphal (since deceased and at present represented by a legal heir Pramod Kumar Sethi), filed a return before the Income- ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... me-tax Officer at Imphal and the file numbers were reflected in the order. Some of the assesses were produced in person that the fact that the amounts were shown to be withdrawn from the account available to them and shown in their income-tax file. Moreover, all the amounts were paid by the creditors by account payee cheque. We, however, considering the fact that all the five accounts were opened in between July 18 and July 26, 1988, and in a particular branch of the bank and as such the genuineness of the transactions was doubted. Vide order dated March 28, 2003, the appeal was admitted for hearing on the following questions of law: "1. Whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the order passed by the Tribunal is viti ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ve case, the apex court observed: "Hence, it is reasonable to assume that those cash credit entries are capital receipts though for one reason or other the assessee had not come out with the true story as regards the person from whom it got those amounts. It is true that in the absence of satisfactory explanation from the assessee the Income-tax Officer may assume that cash credit entries in its books represent income from undisclosed sources. But what inference should be drawn from the facts proved is a question of fact and the Tribunal's finding on that question is final." Mr. Bhuyan has also drawn our attention to a decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the case of Raunaq Ram Nand Lal v. CIT [2002] 254 ITR 617. In Raunaq R ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 264 ITR 254 and this court held: "Mr. Bhuyan's contention that a payment made by cheque cannot be treated as sacrosanct and his reliance on the law laid down in Precision Finance P. Ltd.'s case [1994] 208 ITR 465 (Cal) are wholly misplaced inasmuch as even we do not hold that a transaction, which takes place by way of cheque, is invariably sacrosanct. What we hold is that so far as the present assessee-appellant is concerned, his burden stood discharged, when he had proved the identity of his creditors, the genuineness of the transactions, which he had with his creditors, and the creditworthiness of his creditors vis-a-vis the transactions, which he had with the creditors. The burden had, then, shifted to the Revenue to show that though ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... r period is in respect of five creditors only. In view of the above, there can be no room for doubt and no contrary inference could have been drawn that these are fake transactions. Admittedly, there is no other evidence or material in support of the finding recorded by the Tribunal and the law is well-settled that where the appreciation of evidence is not per se bad, and perverse, no substantial question of law arises. If any authority is needed, the observations of the apex court in Santosh Hazari v. Purushottam Tiwari [2001] 251 ITR 84 (SC); [2001] 3 SCC 179 may be perused. Hence, on consideration of the facts of the present case, we hold that there was no evidence or materials before the Tribunal to come to the finding that the a ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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