Case Law Details
Simply because the Assessee could not produce the dealers, the entire purchases cannot be treated as bogus purchases. The Assessing Officer could have made further investigations to ascertain the genuineness of the transactions.
Relevant Extract of the Judgment
9. It is apparent from the assessment order that the basis for treating the purchases made by the Assessee from certain parties as mentioned in the assessment orders is only the information obtained by the Assessing Officer from Sales Tax department. We find that this information was not parted to the Assessee by the Assessing Officer.It is also not known as to what kind of information Assessing Officer has got from the Sales Tax department relating to the present Assessee before us. Solely based on this information obtained from Sales Tax department, Assessing Officer required the Assessee to produce these parties for verification and simultaneously he deputed the Inspectors to issue notices under Section 133(6) to these parties.Again, we noticed from the assessment order that Inspector has given a report stating that some of the notices were returned unserved and it was also reported by the Inspectior that no such business activities are carried out at the given address in some of the parties. Again, this report of the Inspector was never forwarded to the Assessee at any point of time, but was kept on record. Thus, it is apparent that sole basis of addition is only the information obtained from the Sales Tax department by the Assessing Officer. The Assessee for whatever reason might not have produced the parties for verification may be due to lapse of time or may be due to the dealers shifting from their business premises etc., but he has produced the copies of bank statements, where the payments were made through cheques and the ledger copies of the books of the Assessee of the parties etc. to prove the genuineness of the purchases. The Assessing Officer never doubted the sales made by the Assessee for such purchases, in fact, he has accepted the sales. Without there being any purchases, there could not be any sales. It is also not proved by the Assessing Officer that the amounts paid by the Assessee to the dealers were returned back to the Assessee and the purchase bills issued are only accommodation entries. Simply because the Assessee could not produce the dealers, the entire purchases cannot be treated as bogus purchases. The Assessing Officer could have made further investigations to ascertain the genuineness of the transactions.
12. In view of the above discussion, we hold that there is no material on record to conclusively prove that the purchases made by the Assessee are bogus purchases and nothing is brought on record to suggest that the information gathered by the Sales Tax department conclusively proves that the dealers are providing only the accommodation entries to the Assessee before us, thus we hold that addition made under Section 69C cannot be sustained.
13. However, at the same time, keeping in view the nature of business of the Assessee and the fact that the assessee is making local purchases without any transportation bills, delivery challans etc., the possibility of the Assessee making purchases in grey market on cash cannot be ruled out. Therefore, keeping in view the facts and circumstances of the case, we direct the Assessing Officer to disallow 2% of the above purchases to meet the anomalies.
