Tribunal held that before service of notice under section 142(1) the assessee had already expired. His legal heirs did not file the return for the assessment year. Therefore, the right course for the Assessing Officer was to find out the legal heirs and more particularly, the legal heir who had inherited the assets and liabilities of the deceased assessee because the legal heir was liable to pay taxes of the deceased only equivalent to the property inherited from the deceased. If the assessment order was finalised but the legal heir later on comes forward and states that she had not inherited any property from the deceased assessee the demand could not be recovered. Other legal heirs if any would take an objection that they had not been served any notice under section 142(1) or under section 148 , etc. Therefore, the procedure followed by the Assessing Officer was patently illegal. Service of notice upon a dead person under section 142(1) would not authorise him to assume jurisdiction to pass an assessment order on the legal heirs also. The right course for him was to explore jurisdiction for issuing a notice on the legal heirs of the deceased assessee. This aspect could have been examined by the Commissioner (Appeals). Had she gone through the written submissions to the effect that the assessee died his appeal could have been allowed to be filed manually as provided in rules 45 and 12 . The Commissioner (Appeals) ought to have entertained the appeal, and should have decided it on the merits. The order of the Commissioner (Appeals) was set aside and the issue was restored to the Commissioner (Appeals) for readjudication. The observations explaining the position contemplated in section 159 for assessing the legal heirs would not impair or injure the case of the Assessing Officer or cause any prejudice to the defence/explanation of the assessee or other legal heirs in future.( AY.2017-18)