Cash was seized from one of the employees (the assessee before the Court) by the Telangana police and handed over to the Income Tax Department. The department, the very next day, conducted search operations under section 132 on both the employer and the employee. In the warrant issued, the place of the search was left blank, and the names of the two witnesses were from locations different from where the search was conducted. On writ\u00a0 the Court ruled that a warrant issued under section 132 by the Principal Director of Income Tax, which fails to mention the search place, is invalid. The Court further observed that the documents (Panchnama) used to conduct the search were fabricated, as the witnesses were from places different from the search location. Court held that\u00a0 an income tax inspection and\/ or investigation would be permissible only in respect of a past event but not for possible future contingencies; and if assessee was going to disclose and explain cash of Rs.5.00 crore in its income tax returns for 2019-20, there was no basis for proceeding with any coercive action against it as it would clearly violate Article 300-A of Constitution of India . Department is\u00a0\u00a0 directed to refund cash of Rs.5.00 crores to assessee with interest at 12% p.a. along with costs of Rs.20,000 (AY. 20019 -20 )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 132: Search and Seizure \u2013Strictures – Warrant issued \u2013 Search premises left blank \u2013 Witnesses from different place \u2013 Panchnama – Search invalid \u2013 Documents to conduct search fabricated- An income tax inspection and\/ or investigation would be permissible only in respect of a past event but not for possible future contingencies- Department is directed to refund cash of Rs.5.00 crores to assessee with interest at 12% p.a. along with costs of Rs.20,000. [ S.132A, 132B, Art. 14, 226 , 300A ] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-d2z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50132,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50131\/revisions\/50132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}