A.S. Enterprise Vs Commissioner of State Tax U.P. (Allahabad High court)
The petitioner’s case was that the petitioner could not produce relevant documents at the time of inspection of goods in transit. The same (all documents) were produced at the time of physical verification. The authority declined to verify the same. The detaining authority formed a view that further documents may be produced only along with show cause notice. The petitioner produced the entire set of documents being original invoices to establish that the goods in question were covered by regular tax invoice with respect to transaction on inter-state sale on which IGST had been paid.
Treating the above explanation to be an afterthought and solely on account of absence of such documents at the stage of interception of the goods and physical verification, it has been assumed, the goods were being imported into the State of U.P. in contravention of law. Accordingly, tax and penalty had been demanded and confiscation made.
There is no dispute to the fact that the documents that were produced by the petitioner though at the stage of the show cause notice were original tax invoices issued by the petitioner. No enquiry was made to doubt the genuineness of such tax invoices or to doubt the date of issue of such invoices. Thus, all tax invoices produced by the petitioner to cover the disputed goods are dated 31.07.2021. No enquiry appears to have been made from the revenue authorities in the State of Punjab to confirm if the transactions were genuine. Then, it is not the case of the revenue that the goods found transported were different from the goods disclosed in the tax invoices produced by the petitioner. No enquiry was conducted by the respondent authorities either from the purchasing dealers or the Assessing Authority to doubt the transaction at the end of the consignee.
In view of the above lack of enquiry and lack of reasonable doubt, the continued seizure and confiscation as also the demand of tax and penalty is based solely on presumptions and conjectures.
In absence of proper enquiry and lack of reasonable doubt
