Pr. CIT Vs. Dr. Vandana Gupta (Delhi High Court)
In the present case, the assessee merely made a voluntary surrender; she did not offer any explanation as to the nature of income or its source. The observations in MAK Data (supra) are that the authorities are not really concerned with the statement- whether voluntarily or otherwise and have to see whether there was any non disclosure of material facts, or income. The complete failure to furnish any details with respect to the income, which if given could have been the only reasonable basis for deletion of penalty, in the opinion of the court, reinforced the views of the AO and CIT (A) that the revised return was an afterthought, based on the subsequent event of disclosure of `2,00,00,000/-. The court further notices that by reason of Explanation 1 to Section 271(1)(c), an assessee is not absolved of penalty, if she or he “offers an explanation which he is not able to substantiate and fails to prove that such explanation is bona fide and that all the facts relating to the same and material to the computation of his total income have been disclosed by him”. The mere offer therefore, of the amount during the search in the absence of any explanation for the source of income, renders the assessee’s argument insubstantial in the totality of circumstances.
