Sec. 153A of Income Tax Act, 1961— Assessment --- Revenue held that assessee filed his income return (ITR) for AY 2002-03, comprising of income from salary, income from House Property and Capital Gains. On 15th December, 2004, a search and seizure operation under Section 132 of the Act was conducted. During the course of search, various incriminating documents/diaries/loose papers were found and seized. During post search proceedings, statements on oath were recorded of Sh. B.M.Gupta, his son Sh. Rajeev Gupta and accountant Sh. Ram Avtar Singhal. The search operation revealed that Sh. B. M. Gupta was allegedly engaged in “hundi” business at the relevant time, wherein previously undisclosed money/cash was arranged from various parties including the respondent, and the same was advanced to different parties for undisclosed interest income on the said advanced amounts. Sh. B. M. Gupta and his Group acted as mediator/broker in such clandestine financial transactions and charged commission/brokerage for arranging the same.  The contents of documents found and seized and the statements recorded on oath were forwarded to the Assessing Officer (AO) holding jurisdiction to undertake action under Section 153C/148 of the Act against the assessee. In the appeal filed by the assessee, CIT (A) deleted the addition made by the AO. Thereafter, when the Revenue carried the matter further in appeal, the ITAT confirmed the order of CIT(A) on the ground that the issues in appeal were directly covered in the previous appeals as decided by the ITAT.  Revenue has assailed the order of the Tribunal and filed an appeal. In view of the aforesaid facts and the concurrent findings given by the CIT (A) and ITAT, it is evident that the Revenue has not been able to produce any cogent material which could fasten the liability on the assessee. The CIT(A) has also examined the assessment record and has observed that the AO did not make any further inquiry/investigation on the information passed on by the DCIT, No attempt or effort was made to gather or corroborate evidence in this relation.
On the facts and circumstances, court were not inclined to entertain the present appeal as no substantial question of law arises for their consideration. --- CIT vs. SANT LAL [2020] 23 ITCD Online 5 (DEL)